The Art of Poetry and the Art of Memory: Philip Sidney's Mnemonic Poetics

This article explores the significance of the art of memory as a mnemonic poetics in Philip Sidney's literary theory and practice. The art of memory is more than an ancient mnemonic method, I argue; rather, it constitutes a poetics that evolves from Plato to Petrarch as part of an interdiscipli...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Renaissance and reformation
Subtitles:"Special issue: Interpoetics in Renaissance Poetry"
Main Author: Helfer, Rebeca 1969- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Iter Press 2022
In: Renaissance and reformation
Year: 2022, Volume: 45, Issue: 2, Pages: 105-137
RelBib Classification:KAG Church history 1500-1648; Reformation; humanism; Renaissance
VA Philosophy
Further subjects:B Simonides
B Sonnets
B Philip Sidney
B Plato
B Poetics
B Rhetoric
B Mnemonics
B Cicero
B Ruin
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Summary:This article explores the significance of the art of memory as a mnemonic poetics in Philip Sidney's literary theory and practice. The art of memory is more than an ancient mnemonic method, I argue; rather, it constitutes a poetics that evolves from Plato to Petrarch as part of an interdisciplinary dialogue and debate about how the past is remembered (particularly through love stories) and remade in the present. This tradition of mnemonic poetics is central to Sidney's portrayal of the art of poetry as an art of memory in his Apology for Poetry, a tradition that Sidney remembers anew in his sonnet sequence, Astrophil and Stella. Sidney constructs his poem as a memory theatre in which he demonstrates and indeed dramatizes the art of memory indirectly and ironically: through a poetic persona, Astrophil, who longs for an "art of forgetting" in his pursuit of originality.
ISSN:2293-7374
Contains:Enthalten in: Renaissance and reformation
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.33137/rr.v45i2.39760