Sidney's Poetics

Michael Mack is vice provost and dean of undergraduate studies at the Catholic University of America.

"Mack's probing, informed study looks afresh at the central assertion made by Philip Sidney in his Apology for Poetry, the most vital Elizabethan treatise on the subject. . . . . [I]t makes a significant contribution to the large literature of interpretation devoted to the Apology, and students of 16th-century intellectual culture should not neglect it."--Choice "In clear and concise English, Mack ranges within the zodiac of classical, medieval, and Renaissance sources in his attempt to understand how Sidney might have understood his terms. . . . Sidney's Poetics is well worth reading."--Renaissance Quarterly "Mack proves Sir Philip Sidney read widely and well. . . . Sidney's Poetics goes far to connect Sidney's new Renaissance ideas with medieval thinking and to refine our own ideas of the rise of modernity."-- Bibliotheque d'Humanisme et Renaissance "[For] all scholars interested in intellectual history, Mack's work should become a first stop for inquiries into the development of artistic creativity."-- Sixteenth Century Journal "[A] remarkably thorough account of Sidney's well-known and lesser-known sources. . . . This is an impressive and useful book, the interdisciplinary focus of which makes it beneficial reading across a variety of scholarly fields."--Toronto Journal of Theology