The court and a new infinite universe are the respective protagonists of Sir Philip Sidney's first and second Arcadia. If the Old Arcadia (1579) humorously desecrates the figure of the sovereign and the hierarchical order irradiating from him, the New Arcadia (1584) is a grandioseattempt to "reform" the political and moral dilemma portrayed in the first romance. The eliocentric cosmos of Copernicus and the infinite universe of Giordano Bruno were for Sidney compatible with his idea of a new social, political and moral order. Written in an age when astronomical and geographical discoveries were definitely tearing apart the centuries- old Aristotelian cosmos, the two Arcadias testify to Sidney's dissatisfaction with the old closed Ptolemaic universe and to his interest in the new forms of knowledge which were opening up the path to the scientific thought of the "new philosophy". The transition from the closed world of the court of the Old Arcadia to the infinite universe of the New Arcadia signals the crisis of humanism and the rise of a new and modern notion of literature. The figure of Sidney emerging from this book is not the canonical sigure as the humanistic Christian knight. Fron an attentive and close analysis of Sidney's works, this book rather extrapolates the portrait of an exuberant and rebellious aristocrat, enthusiastic supporter of the heterodox and anti-aristotelian ideas which were circulating in late sixteenth-century Elisabethan London.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

The Arcadian and their Critcs

The Parts and the Whole: Polemics on then Chivalric Romance

Genres and Politics: the Old Arcadia
Dark Plotting in Arcadia

«Wonders are no wonders in a wonderful subject»: the New Arcadia

«Natura est deus in rebus»

«Heroycall effects»

Bibliography

Index

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Rosanna Camerlingo FROM THE COURTLY WORLD TO THE INFINITE UNIVERSE editore DELL'ORSO edizione 1993 pagine 250 formato 15x21 brossura con alette tempo medio evasione ordine a richiesta 16.00 € 16.00 € ISBN : 88-7694-147-9 EAN :

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