Pagina principaleGruppiConversazioniAltroStatistiche
Cerca nel Sito
Questo sito utilizza i cookies per fornire i nostri servizi, per migliorare le prestazioni, per analisi, e (per gli utenti che accedono senza fare login) per la pubblicità. Usando LibraryThing confermi di aver letto e capito le nostre condizioni di servizio e la politica sulla privacy. Il tuo uso del sito e dei servizi è soggetto a tali politiche e condizioni.

Risultati da Google Ricerca Libri

Fai clic su di un'immagine per andare a Google Ricerca Libri.

Sto caricando le informazioni...

The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia : The Old Arcadia (Oxford World's Classics)

di Sir Philip Sidney

UtentiRecensioniPopolaritàMedia votiCitazioni
2252118,865 (3.48)1
Philip Sidney was in his early twenties when he wrote his `Old' Arcadia for the amusement of his younger sister, the Countess of Pembroke. The book, which he called 'a trifle, and that triflingly handled', reflects their youthful vitality.The `Old' Arcadia tells a romantic story in a manner comparable to that of Shakespeare's early comedies. It is divided into five `Acts', and abounds in lively speeches, dialogues, and quasi-dramatic tableaux. Two young princes, Pyrocles and Musidorus, disguise themselves as an Amazon and ashepherd to gain access to the Arcadian Princesses, who have been taken into semi-imprisonment by their father to avoid the dangers foretold by an oracle.As a vehicle for Sidney's prophetic ideas about English versification, the `Old' Arcadia also includes over seventy poems in a wide variety of metres and genres. In clarity, symmetry, and coherence the `Old' version is greatly superior both to the ambitious but unfinished `New' Arcadia and theamalgamated, `composite' version, a hybrid monster which Sidney himself never envisaged.… (altro)
Nessuno
Sto caricando le informazioni...

Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro.

Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro.

» Vedi 1 citazione

Mostra 2 di 2
[The Old Arcadia] - Sir Philip Sidney
[Sidney’s Poetic Justice: The Old Arcadia, its Ecologues, and Renaissance Pastoral Traditions] - Robert E Stillman.
[The Sound of Virtue: Philip Sidney’s Arcadia and Elizabethan Politics] - Blair Worden

The Old Arcadia was probably completed in 1580, but not published until 1907, however books 3-5 of the old Arcadia were published in 1593 as part of the New Arcadia, which has also been given the title of The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia. The Old Arcadia survived only in manuscript form. Sidney died in 1587 and left a revised version of the Arcadia which was published by his friend Fulke Greville in 1590 as the New Arcadia some four years after Sidney’s death. The 1593 version was a patching together of the New Arcadia and parts of the old Arcadia. The Arcadia then was never published in Sidney’s lifetime and since his death has appeared in three versions. I read the complete Old Arcadia in the World Classics edition. The publishing history is confusing and the text itself in whatever version is not an easy read and to fully appreciate it I felt I needed the help of Robert E Stillman and Blair Worden. The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature calls Sidney “a prince among Elizabethan lyric writers and sonneteers” and so he deserves to be read, even if the Worlds Classic Edition is 360 pages of close typed text plus notes and appendices.

Sir Philip Sidney dedicates the Arcadia “to my dear Lady and sister the Countess of Pembroke” calling it

“this idle work of mine, which I fear (like the spider’s web) will be thought fitter to be swept away than worn to any other purpose……. Now it is done only for you only to you: if you keep it to yourself, or to such friends who will weigh errors in the balance of goodwill, I hope for the father’s sake it will be pardoned, perchance made much of, though in itself it have deformities. For indeed for severer eyes it is not, being but a trifle, and that triflingly handled.”

Of course we cannot believe that Sidney never intended to publish or at least make his manuscript widely known. He was a courtier to Queen Elizabeth and master of the idea of Sprezzatura which could be defined as doing wonderful things without any apparent effort: a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says without effort and almost without any thought about it. Robert E Stillman in ‘Sidney’s Poetic Justice’ claims that it is a book that shows the reader how to live in justice and contentment, it comes close to being a teaching manual. Sidney believed in the power of poetry and its ability to have real effects on both the author and its readers.

The Old Arcadia is a prose romance in five books with collections of poetry interspersed at the end of each of the first four books. In the first book Duke Basilius of Arcadia in ancient Greece consults the oracle at Delphos. He is frightened by the prophecy and decides to hide himself away with his two daughters Pamela and Philoclea in their summer lodges leaving his kingdom in the hands of his friend and councillor Philanax. Two princes enter Arcadia Musidorous and Pyrocles and seek out Philoclea after Pyrocles has fallen in love with a portrait of her. To gain entrance to the royal household Pyrocles dresses up in disguise as an Amazon named Cleophila and meanwhile Musidorous has fallen in love with the sister Pamela and he disguises himself as a shepherd named Dorus. The princesses are set upon in a field by a lion and a bear and Cleophila and Dorus rescue them by killing the animals. Book two is concerned with the courtship of the two princesses and at the end of the book Cleophila (Pyrocles) rescues Basilius from an angry revolutionary mob, single handedly putting down the resistance. In book three Cleophila and Dorus want to push ahead with the seduction of the princesses. Dorus lures Pamela away from the family and plans to elope with her, but that night he cannot contain himself and Pamela is saved from being raped by Dorus, by some rowdy passers by. In book four there are further complications Cleophila lures Basilius and his wife away from the royal household he then throws off his disguise and makes love to Philoclea, unfortunately a member of the household overhears the lovers and locks them in their chamber. Basilius is duped into drinking a potion that renders him unconscious with all appearances of having been poisoned. Dorus has been captured by the revellers and has been brought to the royal household. Book five is the trial of the two princes now accused of murder, rape and kidnapping.

The majority of the Old Arcadia is taken up by the prose romance and the first thing that I noticed was the flowing style of Sidney’s writing. It is a complicated story but the plot holds together well, there is very little magic or unbelievable chance encounters and the characterisation is good. Sidney is able to express well the moral dilemmas of his protagonists and elicit the sympathies of his readers at the appropriate moments. His writing however could not be called concise and his frequent use of John Lyly’s Euphuistic style may wrong-foot the modern reader. Here is an example:

“Euarchus did not further exceed his meanest subject with the greatness of his fortune than he did surmount the greatness of his fortune with the greatness of his mind “

The word play is typical of the Elizabethan prose style and Sidney just about keeps it within reasonable bounds most of the time. He is quite good with comical situations, but it is his descriptions of the pastoral world of Arcadia along with the moral choices facing his characters, with his intelligent use of irony that gives his prose a richness that I have not found in other prose stylists of the period. There are passages that appear to be exercises in rhetoric, for example an extended conversation between Musidorous and Pyrocles on the advantages and disadvantages of love in comparison with virtue, but these are well argued and provide important issues for the reader to contemplate. There are occasional songs and sonnets interwoven within the prose passages as well as the sections of eclogues at the end of the books. Book five which describes the trial and sentencing of the two princes is very well written.

Robert E Stillman in Sidney’s Poetic Justice argues that the real meat of the Old Arcadia is contained in the eclogues and songs that follow the first four books. The setting of the book is in old Arcadia a pastoral retreat, a golden age, populated for the most part by shepherds and their sheep. It is the shepherds that sing the songs and recite the poetry in the pastoral tradition that stretches back through Vergil, Plutarch, Barclay, Sannazaro and up to the more contemporary Edmund Spenser. Stillman claims that Sidney redefines the pastoral poetic tradition. The idle life as lived by the shepherds in Arcadia is a metaphor for goodness, for virtue. The shepherds are not idealized but they are in search of the quiet mind. Patience and virtue even Stoicism are the moral responses to bad fortune while temperance and justice are the guarantees of good fortune. The eclogues sung and recited by the shepherds provide in some instances a commentary on the issues faced by protagonists in the romantic fiction. The eclogues follow the tradition of song contests, debates, amorous complaints etcetera, but Sidney explores an extensive range of styles and poetic forms, making the poetry more rich in the process. He also uses them to instruct the reader on the moral issues faced by his characters in the storyline. The use of eclogues in this way was an innovation at the time; Stillman says it providing the reader with pictures of the events in the work, recreating the fiction actively in his imagination. A major theme in the Arcadia is the divided mind or the struggle between reason and passion and the poetry serves as a sounding board for the complexities of this struggle which are not so apparent to the characters in the story.

How effective this is depends of course on the success of the poems, but Sidney is a good imaginative poet, sometimes producing magical sections or lines that sing out to the reader. He can be obscure and at times completely baffling. I have now read the elegies at the end of book four a number of times and I am no nearer to working out their significance. In stark contrast the double sestine “Ye goat-herd gods” that kicks off section four stands on its own and fits within the fiction delightfully. ‘Ye goat-herd gods’ and ‘On Ister Bank’ are the poems that have been anthologised from the Arcadia, but there are others just as good. I particularly like the love laments of Plangus and Boulon that are part of the second collection and starts with ‘Alas, how long this pilgrimage doth last?’

In his preface to ‘The Sound of Virtue’ Blair Worden states that ‘Sidney’s Arcadia is the unread classic of English literature. He goes on to say the reasons for this are the ‘difficulty of telling what the Arcadia means and where to find a copy of it and also to know how to read it.’ He attempts to solve this problem by placing the work in its historical context. His aim is to relate the Arcadia to the political concerns of Sidney and his friends and to the language in which they expressed them. He says ‘we lose the guiding thread of his fiction, a thread of which politics are an essential component.’ He admits that in taking this approach other themes and issues within the Arcadia lie outside the scope of his book. Worden points out that Sidney wrote the major part of the Acadia when he had temporarily retired from life at the court of Queen Elizabeth. He had just completed his letter to the Queen which aimed to dissuade her from marrying the Duke of Anjou.

Queen Elizabeth’s flirtation with the Duke of Anjou was looked upon with horror by Sidney’s faction at court. Sidney was related to Lord Dudley Earl of Leicester who had at one time been the queens favourite and earlier had been in pole position to marry the queen. The Dudleys and the Sidney’s were English protestant families and the Duke of Anjou was a French catholic. The fear was that if he should marry the queen then catholicism would be restored as the national religion with an ongoing persecution of protestant families. Anjou had been heavily involved in the St Bartholomew massacre of protestants in France; a mere eight years ago which Sidney had witnessed first hand. It would not then be too much of a stretch to link the abdication of authority of Basilius in the Arcadia with Queen Elizabeths proposed marriage to the Duke of Anjou. Both events in Sidney’s view would have disastrous consequences for the respective kingdoms of Arcadia and England.

In the fourth eclogues Philisides (almost an anagram of Philip Sidney) relates how he was once a courtier and has now become a shepherd in Arcadia, his life as a young man follows the same path as Philip Sidney. The eclogue not only models the life of the real Philip Sidney but it also tells of his life being diverted by his passion for Mira or perhaps his unsuccessful wooing of Queen Elizabeth. The lines from a poem described by Philisides as a song from a dream, might have come directly from the heart of Sidney himself:

“Far from my thoughts was aught whereto their minds aspire
Who under courtly pomps do hatch a base desire.
Free all my powers were from those captiving snares
Which heav’nly purest gifts defile in muddy cares.”


Worden concludes his book with the observation that where passion rules, tyranny will prevail in the heart and in the state. Where reason rules moderate and limited government will prevail in the heart and in the state. Major themes in the Arcadia which could easily be interpreted as commentary of the situation in 1580’s England. Earlier Worden provides a detailed history of the period 1578-80 at the court of Queen Elizabeth, it is well researched and is a compelling story of the events. In subsequent chapters he finds many references in the Arcadia to the life of Sir Philip Sidney and this is where the book strays more towards a biography of Sidney rather than a critique of the Arcadia. It is however a very good biography as Worden uses the historical background together with the text of the Arcadia to get inside the mind of one of the most fascinating figures of late Tudor England.

Philisides, Cleophila, Philanax, Philoclea are characters that appear in the Arcadia it is almost as if Philip Sidney cannot keep himself out of the story. Are we perhaps witnessing various parts of the same mind, the mind of Philip Sidney as he grapples with the divisive mind of passion and reason? there must be a thesis in there for someone to write, but in the meantime we have two excellent books by Stillman and Worden. Stillman is to be preferred for his insights into the Arcadia as a piece of literature, but Worden is useful for the political context. I would rate both books as four stars. The old Arcadia by Philip Sidney certainly breaks new ground in the literature of its time and while I sometimes got a little bored by the prose romance I have found myself revisiting the poetry and so a five star read. ( )
3 vota baswood | Dec 19, 2018 |
Accused of losing his nerve ( )
  t29 | Feb 12, 2018 |
Mostra 2 di 2
nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione
Devi effettuare l'accesso per contribuire alle Informazioni generali.
Per maggiori spiegazioni, vedi la pagina di aiuto delle informazioni generali.
Titolo canonico
Titolo originale
Titoli alternativi
Data della prima edizione
Personaggi
Luoghi significativi
Eventi significativi
Film correlati
Epigrafe
Dedica
Incipit
Citazioni
Ultime parole
Nota di disambiguazione
Dati dalle informazioni generali inglesi. Modifica per tradurlo nella tua lingua.
DO NOT COMBINE WITH THE OTHER VERSION OF THE ARCADIA. This is the Original or "Old" Arcadia. Sir Philip Sidney wrote The Arcadia twice. Some years after he finished the original version he began a thorough re-writing, in some places altering plot and characters, but died before he could finish it. Since the revised version is generally regarded as an improvement, that's the version usually published (sometimes with the last few books of the original version appended to "complete" it). However, the so-called "Old Arcadia" is sometimes published by itself (for instance in the Oxford World Classics edtions with the isbns 019283956X, 0199549842, 0198118554 and 019281690X; the Cambridge edition isbn 0521064716; or in volume four of Feuillerat's Complete Prose Works of Sidney). The Old Arcadia is a different "work" and (where identifiable) should not be combined with the main Arcadia work.
Redattore editoriale
Elogi
Lingua originale
DDC/MDS Canonico
LCC canonico

Risorse esterne che parlano di questo libro

Wikipedia in inglese

Nessuno

Philip Sidney was in his early twenties when he wrote his `Old' Arcadia for the amusement of his younger sister, the Countess of Pembroke. The book, which he called 'a trifle, and that triflingly handled', reflects their youthful vitality.The `Old' Arcadia tells a romantic story in a manner comparable to that of Shakespeare's early comedies. It is divided into five `Acts', and abounds in lively speeches, dialogues, and quasi-dramatic tableaux. Two young princes, Pyrocles and Musidorus, disguise themselves as an Amazon and ashepherd to gain access to the Arcadian Princesses, who have been taken into semi-imprisonment by their father to avoid the dangers foretold by an oracle.As a vehicle for Sidney's prophetic ideas about English versification, the `Old' Arcadia also includes over seventy poems in a wide variety of metres and genres. In clarity, symmetry, and coherence the `Old' version is greatly superior both to the ambitious but unfinished `New' Arcadia and theamalgamated, `composite' version, a hybrid monster which Sidney himself never envisaged.

Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche

Descrizione del libro
Riassunto haiku

Discussioni correnti

Nessuno

Copertine popolari

Link rapidi

Voto

Media: (3.48)
0.5
1 2
1.5
2 1
2.5 2
3 6
3.5 1
4 5
4.5 1
5 5

Sei tu?

Diventa un autore di LibraryThing.

 

A proposito di | Contatto | LibraryThing.com | Privacy/Condizioni d'uso | Guida/FAQ | Blog | Negozio | APIs | TinyCat | Biblioteche di personaggi celebri | Recensori in anteprima | Informazioni generali | 203,207,317 libri! | Barra superiore: Sempre visibile