Risa Stephanie Bear

Defence of Poesie (Ponsonby, 1595)

Comprendiendo la tesis de Risa Stephanie sobre la comprensión de Sir Philip Sidney es fácil comprender el significado "trascendental" de una gran mayoría de los Salmos de David.

Por ejemplo este verso del Salmo 2:2:

2: The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, 2 Se levantarán los reyes de la tierra, y príncipes conspirarán contra Jehová y contra su ungido,^{[b] [c]} diciendo: 2I re della terra si ritrovano e i principi si consigliano insieme contro l'Eterno e contro il suo Unto, 2 Es treten auf Könige der Erde, und Fürsten tun sich zusammen gegen den HERRN und seinen Gesalbten: 2Pourquoi les rois de la terre se soulèvent-ils Et les princes se liguent-ils avec eux Contre l'Éternel et contre son oint? 2consurgent reges terrae et principes tractabunt pariter adversum Dominum et adversum christum eius 2Восстают цари земли, и князья совещаются вместе против Господа и против Помазанника Его.

Metaphor The poet's "presupposition" makes no assertion of fact, though it is important to note that it does imply an assertion that the model presented is, if "rightly" done, exemplary. Every practitioner of an "art" or "science" proceeds by mimetic activity, in observing and then in proceeding through metaphor to represent to society what has been observed. Only the poet (here, creator of fiction, or literary practitioner) trades in metaphor itself rather than in its product. This is not strictly true, even for Sidney, for he admits that the priest or preacher takes precedence in such trading. But he does not admit that theologians work in anything "better" than metaphor; instead, he refers to David and Jesus as poets, and suggests, albeit obliquely, that all didacticism is dependent upon a merely posited and purely metaphorical world view. A simpler way to put all this is that there is unfortunately no alternative to simply taking our belief in God, the cosmos, our earth as we perceive it, and our society as we experience it, on faith and not as anything known directly in and of itself. The lines drawn ("coupleth") in mental space between "notion" and "example" are the very stuff of which all knowledge, Sidney implies, is made. Introduction to Defence of Poesie of Sir Philip Sidney by Risa Stephanie Bear, 1992