Institutions of Poetry from Petrarch to Milton

Abstract

When Sidney contends that tragedy “maketh Kings feare to be tyrants,” he speaks of fi ction as though it were a redoubtable social power or an unnumbered estate. During the early modern period writers reexamined ideas of poetry’s public value and took an expansive view of the poet’s offi ce — legislator, monument maker, and moral paragon, among others. This paper observes pivotal attempts to make of poetry an institution — a profession that upholds certain norms, a discourse that serves essential social functions, and a vocation and way of life. To establish their art as a major public player, poets and theorists look to models of political and religious authority and fi nd that poetry may compete with, no less than it complements, the ultimate aims of these traditional institutions. Etymologically, an institution is something that stands; this paper explores poetry’s ambitions beyond instructing its readers to constructing itself as an edifi ce of renown.