Philip Sidney, heartthrob poet of the mid 1500s, wrote a piece around 1581 entitled “The Defence of Poesy.” Its lesser-known title, per Dr. Kerri Tom’s 2020 Major English Writers class, is, “Why Everyone Should Read Fiction.”
What Sidney calls “poesy” is essentially what we today call fiction. (The novel hadn’t been invented yet, so poetry was the main form of story-telling.) Apparently, people in Sidney’s day had some harsh criticisms of poetry: some called it a form of lying, others thought it perverted people’s sensibilities about right and wrong. Responding to these and other criticisms, Sidney sets out a compelling argument for reading fiction:
1. Fiction makes knowledge appealing.
Sidney doesn’t fault people who don’t like learning. The reason they don’t is that they haven’t experienced learning in a way that makes it beautiful. He says, “[U]ntil they find a pleasure in the exercises of the mind, great promises of much knowledge will little persuade them that know not the fruits of knowledge” (lines 100-103). Fictional stories bait the unsuspecting reader or listener into a love of knowledge. Stories are a match to the mind’s candle – they show you more than what you could see before, and remind you that there’s always more worth seeing.
2. Anybody can learn from fiction.
Most people who take a philosophy class have already been studying for a while – they’re probably in high school or college. But my three-year-old niece, who doesn’t know a whit of philosophy, will demolish her shelf of storybooks as she thrusts one after another into my hands to read out loud. This illustrates the difference between stories and other educational disciplines: you don’t have to be learned to learn from fiction. Sidney writes, “[The philosopher] teacheth them that are already taught; but the poet is the food for the tenderest stomachs, the poet is indeed the right popular philosopher…” (lines 464-467). If you encounter people who think education is hoity-toity, hand them Harry Potter or The Princess and the Goblin. Good stories are often as down-to-earth as they are deep.
3. Fiction cultivates virtue.
This is one of Sidney’s most emphatic points. Fictional stories are extraordinarily capable of teaching their reader or listener what is good and true and beautiful – and also what’s evil and wrong. Learning, he says, has “the end of well-doing and not of well-knowing only” (lines 317-318). Kids who grow up on Harry Potter know what it means to be a brave, faithful friend. In The Princess and the Goblin, Irene has to trust what’s true, even when no one believes her. Stories don’t just make people smarter; they make people better.
Fictional stories mold the heart and mind to love things worth loving. They reach down to reveal the beauty of learning. And they make readers bastions of virtue in a weary world of wrong.
So thanks, Sidney, for reaching down to show us.
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Kirstie Skogerboe is a senior liberal arts major with a literature emphasis. She grew up in Jerez, Mexico, to which she owes a great deal – being bilingual, valuing two cultures, and (not to be mistaken for least important) eating popcorn with hot sauce. Her childhood is part of what prompted her to join the Around-the-World Semester and get a Global Cultural Studies minor, and also what motivates her to understand the different people that she interacts with in the Writing Studio. To her, writing is about communication. What’s important to you? What do you want to say? How can you say it in a way that people will understand and think is important, too? Those are the questions she hopes to help students answer within and outside of the Writing Studio.