Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• POND, VIRGINIA THOMAS

Titel

IMAGINATION IN THE POETIC THEORY OF PIERRE DE RONSARD AND SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Erscheinungsjahr

1981

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The poetic theories of Pierre de Ronsard and Sir Philip Sidney show some similarities, for example in their statements about verse, rhyme, the unities. More important than the similarities, however, are the differences, which can be explained largely by the differences in the attitudes of the two poets toward the imagination. A key term for both poetry and psychology, imagination was a mental function much argued about in the Renaissance. Both Ronsard and Sidney know to distrust the imagination. Both recognize it does play a part in the poetic process. Sidney ultimately raises imagination to a key role--in the mind of the poet and in the mind of the poem's audience--in the justification of poetry. Ronsard, although at times he seems close to Sidney's position, ultimately prefers to a human mental function the divine inspiration of the Muses or Apollo to raise the status of poem and poet alike. The effects of the attitude toward the imagination are seen in the different statements each makes about invention and imitation. An analysis of those statements, in light of the poet's understanding of the proper function of imagination, indicates that, while Ronsard is clearly in the Platonic/Neoplatonic tradition, Sidney is much more consistently in the Aristotelian tradition than many critics have thought him to be.