Arming the Reader: Sir Philip Sidney and the Literature of Choler

Abstract

This chapter returns to Sir Philip Sidney’s work in order to explore one particular strand of the history of the connection between reading and bodily sensation: poetry’s ability to inflame passionate anger among soldiers. Remembered as the archetypal soldier-poet, Sidney was immersed in classical and early modern theories about poetry’s effects on the minds and bodies of servicemen. He explores the affective impact of literature in both An Apology for Poetry and The Arcadia, suggesting that reading could change men in fortificatory and prejudicial ways by stimulating sensations associated with choler. The capacity to feel virtuous anger, and to act upon it, was regarded in the late sixteenth century as an essential and indeed civilising trait among soldiers. At the same time, however, neo-Stoic thought viewed excessive or uncontrolled anger as shameful. The following discussion places Sidney’s writings alongside treatises dealing with military discipline and emotional self-government in order to explore the place of poetry in the history of military masculinity. Sidney considers the degree to which men should exercise control over their minds and bodies, and deliberates whether abandoning oneself to sensation — especially the anger aroused by certain forms of fiction — may reinforce men’s active commitment to country and commonwealth.