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The Construction of Empire-Garden in Sir Philip Sidney’s New Arcadia

Received: 18 October 2020     Accepted: 30 November 2020     Published: 11 December 2020
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Abstract

The yearning to return to an idyllic ideal or a paradise of a long-lost past seems to be inherent in all men regardless of time and situation, and the poets have been the spokesmen for this dream. Garden poetry is variously reflected in the works of Hesiod, Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Ariosto, Tasso, Petrarch, Dante. The emblematic meaning of garden poetry during the European Renaissance and the prevalence of real garden at the time enormously inspires the imagination of the English poet to invent an ideal “England garden.” In addition, the progression of the spirit of nationalism that results from Reformation enables the court poet with political ideal ardently anticipates the coming of Elizabeth an empire garden. The Renaissance English poets metaphorically take a state or a “body politic” as a garden, which could be evidenced in the tradition of literature, politics, culture and religion at the time. Sir Philip Sidney, a courtier-poet-warrior of the sixteenth century England, zealously wrote his ideal of Elizabethan England into his pastoral romance, New Arcadia. This paper, while centering on the courtly culture, literary tradition and political ideal, attempts to present Sidney’s imagination of Elizabethan empire as a garden that is literally constructed in New Arcadia and hopefully reflects the humanistic ideal of the intellectuals of English Renaissance---the construction of a harmonious Elizabethan garden.

Published in English Language, Literature & Culture (Volume 5, Issue 4)
DOI 10.11648/j.ellc.20200504.13
Page(s) 139-146
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Renaissance, Garden, Empire-garden, Feminine

References
[1] Nona Fienberg, Elizabeth, her poets, and the creation of the courtly manner: a study of Sir John Harington, Sir Philip Sydney, and John Lyly, New York: Garland, 1988.
[2] Beretta, Liva, The World’s a Garden: Garden Poetry of the English Renaissance, Sweden: UPPSALA, 1993.
[3] A Bartlett Giamatti, The Earthly Paradise and the Renaissance Epic, Princeton University Press, 1966.
[4] Fulke Greville, The Life of Sir Philip Sidney, Nowell Smith, Ed, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907.
[5] D. M. Palliser, The Age of Elizabeth: England Under the Later Tudors 1547-1603, 2nd ed., London: Longman, 1998, p, 2.
[6] Edmund Spenser, “The Faeire Queene”, The Complete Works of Edmund Spenser, Smith, J. C, & E. DE. Selincourt, Eds. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965, p. 1.
[7] M. H. Abrams, et al, Eds, The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 4th ed, vol. 1, part 1. London: W•W• Norton & Company, p, 422.
[8] Percy Addleshaw, Sir Philip Sidney, London: Methucn & CO., 1901, p, 41.
[9] John Addington Symonds, Sir Philip Sidney, London: Macmillan and CO., Limited, 1909, pp, 21-33.
[10] When Ralegh wooed the queen as Cynthia in the guise of Ocean, his fictional self, he intended to convince the queen and court indirectly that his “real” self deserved their favor.
[11] Richard Helgerson, Self-Crowned Laureates: Spenser, Milton, and the Literary System, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983, p, 29.
[12] Katherine Duncan-Jones, Ed, The Oxford Authors: Sir Philip Sidney, New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p, 5.
[13] S. K. Orgel, “Sidney’s Experiment in Pastoral: The Lady of May”, Essential Articles for the Study of Sir Philip Sidney, Arthur F. Kinney, Ed. Connecticut: Archon Books, 1986, p, 61.
[14] Fruilleart, Albert, Ed. The Complete Works of Sir Philip Sidney, Vol. 3. London: Cambridge University Press, 1922.
[15] Jessie Herrada Nance (2019), “Civil wildness”: Colonial Landscapes in Philip Sindney’s New Arcadia. Studies in Philology, Incorporated, pp, 227-252.
[16] Kenneth Orne Myrick, Sir Philip Sidney as a literary craftsman, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935, p, 115.
[17] Walter R. Davis, A Map of “Arcadia”: Sidney’s Romance in Its Tradition, in Sidney’s Arcadia, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965, p, 24.
[18] Ake Bergvall (1988), “The ‘Enabling of Judgment’: An Old Reading of the New Arcadia. Studies in Philology, Vol. 85, Issue 4: 471-488.
[19] Edwin M. Everett and Calvin S. Brown, Eds. Masterworks of World Literature, vol. 1. New York: The Dryden Press, 1950, p, 444.
[20] Hu Jialuan, The Starry Heavens:English Renaissance Poetry and Traditional Cosmology Peking:Peking University Press,2001, p, 147-148.
[21] E. M. W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture, London: Chatto & Windus, 1960, p, 85.
[22] Cal Dennis, The Covntesse of Pembrokes Aarcadia, The Kent State University Press, 1970, p, 26.
[23] Wallace MacCaffrey, Elizabeth, London: A Division of Hodder & Stoughton, 1996, pp, 346-350.
[24] Holy Bile, New Revised Standard Version, Song of Songs 5: 12, 6: 7.
[25] Harper Sjoo & Barbara Mor, The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth, New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1990, p, 47.
Cite This Article
  • APA Style

    Ding Xiaoyu. (2020). The Construction of Empire-Garden in Sir Philip Sidney’s New Arcadia. English Language, Literature & Culture, 5(4), 139-146. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ellc.20200504.13

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    ACS Style

    Ding Xiaoyu. The Construction of Empire-Garden in Sir Philip Sidney’s New Arcadia. Engl. Lang. Lit. Cult. 2020, 5(4), 139-146. doi: 10.11648/j.ellc.20200504.13

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    AMA Style

    Ding Xiaoyu. The Construction of Empire-Garden in Sir Philip Sidney’s New Arcadia. Engl Lang Lit Cult. 2020;5(4):139-146. doi: 10.11648/j.ellc.20200504.13

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ellc.20200504.13,
      author = {Ding Xiaoyu},
      title = {The Construction of Empire-Garden in Sir Philip Sidney’s New Arcadia},
      journal = {English Language, Literature & Culture},
      volume = {5},
      number = {4},
      pages = {139-146},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ellc.20200504.13},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ellc.20200504.13},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ellc.20200504.13},
      abstract = {The yearning to return to an idyllic ideal or a paradise of a long-lost past seems to be inherent in all men regardless of time and situation, and the poets have been the spokesmen for this dream. Garden poetry is variously reflected in the works of Hesiod, Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Ariosto, Tasso, Petrarch, Dante. The emblematic meaning of garden poetry during the European Renaissance and the prevalence of real garden at the time enormously inspires the imagination of the English poet to invent an ideal “England garden.” In addition, the progression of the spirit of nationalism that results from Reformation enables the court poet with political ideal ardently anticipates the coming of Elizabeth an empire garden. The Renaissance English poets metaphorically take a state or a “body politic” as a garden, which could be evidenced in the tradition of literature, politics, culture and religion at the time. Sir Philip Sidney, a courtier-poet-warrior of the sixteenth century England, zealously wrote his ideal of Elizabethan England into his pastoral romance, New Arcadia. This paper, while centering on the courtly culture, literary tradition and political ideal, attempts to present Sidney’s imagination of Elizabethan empire as a garden that is literally constructed in New Arcadia and hopefully reflects the humanistic ideal of the intellectuals of English Renaissance---the construction of a harmonious Elizabethan garden.},
     year = {2020}
    }
    

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Author Information
  • School of Foreign Languages, Nanyang Normal University, Nanyang, China

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