“[T]he fault of the man and not the poet”: Sidney’s Troubled Double Vision of Thomas More’s <i>Utopia</i>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In the Defence of Poesy, Philip Sidney refers puzzlingly to Thomas More and Utopia. He praises the “way” this work presents a commonwealth yet faults the man who produced it. Sidney might have followed religious writers who condemned More’s Catholicism and his use of poetic fictions rather than direct assertions of what is true. In context, though, Sidney implies that his equivocation stems from More’s inconclusive dialogue and speculative discourse: genres he deems less effective than narrative in compelling readers to act virtuously. When revising his Arcadia, Sidney tests the poetics outlined in the Defence: a lengthy dialogue is interrupted by new episodes as narrative rises above rational debate and as characters become more obviously dominated by passion, not reason. Sidney’s revisions correspond to reassessments of Utopia at the turn of the century: its wit and poetry could be admired, yet its hybrid, contemplative genres seemed less compelling than narratives whose delight invites virtuous action. Dans sa Defence of Poesy, Philip Sidney se réfère inexplicablement à Thomas More et à son Utopie. Il y loue comment cet ouvrage met en avant un bien commun, tout en trouvant bien des failles à son auteur. Sidney était peut-être d’accord avec certains auteurs religieux ayant condamné le catholicisme de More, ainsi que les fictions poétiques que la République condamne. Toutefois, considérant son propos dans son contexte, Sidney avance que son ambivalence s’explique par l’absence de conclusion du dialogue et le discours spéculatif de More, c’est-à-dire des styles qu’il considère moins à même que la narration de pousser le lecteur à la vertu. Lorsqu’il révise son Arcadia, Sidney met à l’épreuve la poétique qu’il a développée dans sa Defence : un dialogue s’étirant en longueur est interrompu par de nouveaux épisodes, et le récit prend le pas sur le débat rationnel, alors que les personnages se laissent visiblement plus emporter par la passion que par la raison. Les révisions de Sidney correspondent aux réexamens de l’Utopie au tournant du siècle. Il était possible d’admirer l’esprit et la poésie de More, mais son style hybride et contemplatif semble avoir été moins efficace que la narration, qui, elle, invite à la vertu par le plaisir qu’elle provoque.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.012 | 0.031 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.009 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".