An Apology for Poetry (or The Defence of Poesy), by the celebrated soldier-poet Sir Philip Sidney, is the most important work of literary theory published in the Renaissance.

Controversy raged through England during the 1570-80s as Puritans denounced all manner of games & pastimes as a danger to public morals.

In its radical reading of the Defence, this book thus makes a decisive intervention in the field of early modern studies, while raising larger questions about a culture determined to quantify the 'value' of the humanities and to defend the ...