Introduction: The Literary System and its Symptoms: A Disciplinary Glance at the Invention of English Literature

Abstract

Talking and writing about The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia constantly negotiates the problem of which “Arcadia” is under discussion. For most of us, the Arcadia refers to Philip Sidney’s prose romance, which exists in two versions: the Old Arcadia, which circulated in manuscript but was not published until it was rediscovered in the early twentieth century; and the revised and printed New Arcadia—which itself exists in two versions, the quarto printed in 1590 that ends mid-sentence and the folio printed in 1593 that grafts the ending of the Old Arcadia onto the matter printed in the 1590 quarto. But by 1598, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia also included Sidney’s sonnet sequence, Astrophel and Stella; his Defence of Poesie, another collection of sonnets; and a pastoral entertainment now known as The Lady of May. Setting aside these parts of The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia for the moment, another difference between the prose romances designated under the title of the New Arcadia is that the 1590 quarto excised many of the pastoral eclogues that had graced the Old Arcadia, whereas the 1593 folio Arcadia restores many eclogues and even adds three poems not found in either earlier version of the romance.1Finally, beyond the additions to the 1598 folio, the Arcadia invited many seventeenth-century writers to write supplements, continuations, and literary spinoffs.2