Introduction to Sydney: “At the outset of the essay, poetry is portrayed as in engaged in a contest to prove its excellence and virtue against rival sciences like philosophy and history, and, like a participant in on the formal Elizabethan tournaments, must be gendered masculine. By the end of the essay, though, poesy has become not the contender but what is contended for, the prize for which England’s writers strive against those of other nations, the feminine reward for masculine valor” (134-35).
“Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted up with the vigor of his own invention, doth grow in effect another nature, in making things either better than nature bringeth forth, or, quite anew, forms such as never were in nature […] so as he goeth hand in hand with nature, not enclosed within the narrow warrant of her gifts, but freely ranging only within the zodiac of his own wit” (138).
“Poesy therefore is an art of imitation, for so Aristotle termeth it in his word mimesis, that is to say, a representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth—to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture; with this end, to teach and delight” (139).
Orders of poesy: first, divine, both Christian and pagan; second, philosophical, moral, natural, astronomical; third, the true vates, the seers (as in medieval England), or for Sydney, the poets. This third tier is, for Sydney, the foremost. Divine is better than scientific, but poetry is better than both.