In literature the imitations of 'Euphues' which flourished for a while gave
way to a series of romances inaugurated by the 'Arcadia' of Sir Philip
Sidney. Sidney's brilliant position for a few years as the noblest
representative of chivalrous ideals in the intriguing Court of Elizabeth is
a matter of common fame, as is his death in 1586 at the age of thirty-two
during the siege of Zutphen in Holland. He wrote 'Arcadia' for the
amusement of his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, during a period of
enforced retirement beginning in 1580, but the book was not published until
ten years later. It is a pastoral romance, in the general style of Italian
and Spanish romances of the earlier part of the century. The pastoral is
the most artificial literary form in modern fiction. It may be said to have
begun in the third century B. C. with the perfectly sincere poems of the
Greek Theocritus, who gives genuine expression to the life of actual
Sicilian shepherds. But with successive Latin, Medieval, and Renaissance
writers in verse and prose the country characters and setting had become
mere disguises, sometimes allegorical, for the expression of the very far
from simple sentiments of the upper classes, and sometimes for their partly
genuine longing, the outgrowth of sophisticated weariness and ennui, for
rural naturalness. Sidney's very complicated tale of adventures in love and
war, much longer than any of its successors, is by no means free from
artificiality, but it finely mirrors his own knightly spirit and remains a
permanent English classic.
Pages:
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152