‘A Speaking Picture’: the impact and influence of visual culture on the poetry and prose of Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86)

Jones, Henry G. (2025). ‘A Speaking Picture’: the impact and influence of visual culture on the poetry and prose of Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86). University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

In The Defence of Poesy (c. 1581), Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86) defines poetry as ‘a speaking picture’. This thesis sets out to uncover and explore the implications of this suggestive analogy. By examining the contexts of Sidney’s statement, contexts that include both the visual and the literary, it becomes evident that Sidney’s interaction with visual culture is central to an understanding of his works and poetics. These visual and literary contexts include a variety of ideas, authors and artists ranging from the classical to the early modern period. There will be four main themes that will run through the thesis as a whole: the range of visual materials Sidney engaged with, for example, portrait miniatures, imprese and court pageantry; the cosmopolitanism of Sidney’s visual encounters; the spatial specificity of the visual examples Sidney uses; and finally, the idea that the ways in which Sidney explores and engages with the visual is central to how he conceptualizes his own works.
The first chapter considers the commissioning, production and reception of Sidney’s portrait by the artist Paolo Caliari (Veronese) (1528-88). The second investigates the use of the iconography of the ‘Judgement of Paris’ in the short drama The Lady of May (1578). The third chapter then moves to an analysis of the literary technique of ekphrasis both in Sidney’s ‘old’ Arcadia (c. 1580) as well as the revised Arcadia (1583-85). The fourth and fifth chapters both focus on the analogy employed by Sidney in his metaphor of ‘a speaking picture’: firstly, through connecting The Defence of Poesy to other texts both classical and early modern that employ such an analogy; and then in the fifth chapter considering Astrophil and Stella (c. 1581) alongside Sidney’s relationship with the limner Nicholas Hilliard (c. 1547-1619). The final chapter will consider Sidney’s knowledge of imprese, examining Sidney’s sophisticated employment of these word-image combinations in his revised Arcadia.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):