Defense of Poesy
Author: first_name: Sir Philip
last_name: Sidney
Language: English
Year: 1890

Sidney envisions the world as an ideally ordered structure that rewards good and punishes evil, but this order, vitiated by sin, has fallen prey to random chance. The function of poetry is, by teaching (through delight of various sorts), to restore the original order so far as is humanly possible. This treatise defends the dignity of poetry, by which Sidney means literature in general, and criticizes the literature of his own day. Much of this criticism sounds to a modern ear like unimaginative