A radically original theory of how and why Sir Philip Sidney’s The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (1590) matured from a conventional collection of lyric poems into a comprehensive prose narrative. Schneider grounds the multiple versions of Sidney’s text in historical, narratological, and biographical contexts and in particular tracks the influence of international Renaissance literary theory on Sidney’s revisions. Schneider demonstrates that Sidney’s revised Arcadia ought to be read as the practical demonstration of the theoretical problems of voice and narrative Sidney wrestled with during the composition of his Apology for Poetry, and ultimately argues that in the Arcadia Sidney ‘‘surpasse[d] his models and explore[d] new ways of story-telling, ways that were to become indispensable for the rise of the novel in the eighteenth century.”

Contents

1.      “Which Hand She Happily Knew”: The Genesis of the Arcadia: Working Our Way Backwards; Some Inconsistencies within the Revised Version; The Eclogues; The Ending of the New Arcadia; The Difference Between Old and New Arcadia

2.      “Under Hidden Forme”: The Pastoral Origins of the Arcadia: What Is Pastoral?; The Influence of Mantuan and Sannazaro; Sidney’s “Eclogues” and the Lady of May; Sidney’s Pastoral Community; The Potential of the Pastoral Form

3.      “His Precise Method of Oratory”: The Speeches in the Arcadia: The Influence of Montemayor’s Diana; The Philosophical Dialogue; Sidney’s Dialogues; Sidney’s Monologues; From Speech to Narration

4.      “As You Shall After Hear”: Sidney’s Search for a Coherent Plot: Dramatic Unity; The Beginning of a Story “in the Middle”; The Inclusion of “Things Done in Former Time and Other Place”; Retrospective Narrative in the Arcadia; The Consequences of Using Retrospective Narratives; The Apology for Poetry and the Revisions of the Arcadia; Some Repercussions of the More Coherent Plot

5.      “As of a Third Person”: Sidney’s Voices in the Arcadia: The Pastoral Heritage of the Poet’s Persona; The Overt Narrator of the Old Arcadia; The Fate of the Narrator in the New Arcadia; Narrative Authority in the New Arcadia; Sidney’s Personas in the New Arcadia

Conclusion: “The Conjunction Cannot Be Hurtful”: The Arcadia as Sidney’s Poetics: The Interaction of Voices; Inset Narratives; The Relation of Narrators and Their Stories; Fictionalization; Sidney’s Arcadia: Prose Romance or Proto-Novel?