In Renaissance English lit, at least, the real issue for the artist, from Chaucer forward, was not the "truth" of art, but how it fit in with the given social order. Preferment and patronage were always present as motives; celebration, entertainment and flattery are the most common literary occasions. The writers we love -- Chaucer, Shakespear, Donne -- were those who could nevertheless allow the dissenting, dissatisfied, questioning, amused individual to emerge in the middle of their otherwise conventional worlds.
My point is that all the writers of these eras were embedded in and dependent on their social matrix. 19th century writers were the first who saw themselves outside the social matrix, and began to claim a separate "truth" for their work.
BW
Joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
Re: Sidney/ I'd have to go to the library to look it up. But it's a famous passage where he defends the poets from the charge of lying.
Joanna
Michael Smith wrote:
> On Friday 16 May 2008 17:59:53 Robert Wrubel wrote:
>
>
>> In the 17th century you see the beginnings of that distinction. Bacon
>> talks about it, as does Sidney in the Defense of Poesy.
>>
>
> I'd be interested to see chapter and verse on this. I like Sidney
> a lot, and loathe Bacon, but I've read more than I like of the
> latter, and everything there is of the former, and I don't
> remember either of them ever sounding like CP Snow.
>
> Could be wrong, of course -- it's been a while.
>
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
>
___________________________________
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk