It seems that Plato and Sir Philip Sidney are somewhat different and alike but Sidney is more relative. He makes it acceptable for poetry to experiment in different things instead of being so serious all the time. Comparing the two essays, Sidney is more realistic and practical about poetry and its meaning than Plato. Plato wants to create something that does not exist in the world-The Perfect Ideal State. There is nothing wrong with wanting to improve your living environment or the world that you live in, but everything will not go away by the snap of a finger. Therefore, Plato only sees things in black and white. Sidney, on the other hand, lives in a more realistic world where everything is already established. Sidney defends poetry as if it is under prosecution by Plato.
One similarity that Plato and Sidney is the purpose of poetry. Both feel that poetry should educate the person reading it in any aspect of their life. In his essay, The Republic, Plato states:
Come then, and let us pass a leisure hour in story-telling, and our story should be the education of our heroes. By all means. And what shall be their education? Can we find a better than the traditional sort?-and this has two divisions, gymnastic for the body, and music for the soul.
He is saying that poetry should always educate a child or an adult. He also says that
education should be all good and no bad should be involved what so ever. In The Defense of Poetry, Sidney states:
For not only in time they had this priority-although in itself antiquity be venerable-but went before them as causes, to draw with their charming sweetness the wild untamed wits to an admiration of knowledge.
What Sidney is saying is that poetry can make the wild and untamed...
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...abolished because of illegal uses. The difference between Plato and Sidney is Plato focuses on the way things should be while Sidney focuses on the way things are in the world that we do live in. Plato felt as if the poetry taught evil while Sidney felt that the poetry was only teaching what the poet wanted to teach.
Plato and Sidney had some of the same ideas but yet different ideas for poetry at the same time. They may not have the same ideas because of the times that they each lived in. If you think about it, Plato’s time of living was 427-347 B.C. and Sidney lived in the 1500’s. Therefore, each philosopher had a different view of poetry and what it could possible do for their community. Neither one is right nor wrong but, if we, as people, took both of their perceptions to heart, we would probably live in a world that wasn’t so tainted and corruptive.
Although both poems are set in the same environment, and that the visual structure of the poems are similar. Once you look deeper and analysis the poems it becomes clear that they have been written in very different styles, and very different but as powerful emotions running through them i.e. grief and resignment. One poet has a future to look forward to; the other knows that death is around the corner. One poet could not have for scene a death, the other is questioning weather the ‘black diamond dust’ was worth it on reflection.
The last idea that Plato connects to these two writers is about ones perspective of life. Throughout "Learning to Read and Write" Fredrick Douglas see everything from a slaves perspective. Instead of being handed an education he has to work hard for it, so he grows to appreciated education much more than the ones that didn’t have to work for it. As well he starts to feel that being able to read and write is more of a curse for him than anyone else
There are no differences in the poems themselves as they are both set in the same scene but different centuries one has a negative point on the poem whereas the other has a positive however they tell the same story but in different words.
The poetry by these two poets creates several different images, both overall, each with a different goal, have achieved their purposes. Though from slightly different times, they can both be recognized and appreciated as poets who did not fear the outside, and were willing to put themselves out there to create both truth and beauty.
... emotion are more important than reason and finally that simple ideas can help you understand complex ideas. Throughout my readings of this type of poetry and all poetry in fact, that is uses these elements to communicate complex ideas to people in simple ways. Throughout their changing society at the time with revolutions, both government and with life itself, many men and women chose to express their feelings and to preserve the ever changing world. They wanted to keep life simple and to life it with love and kindness.
...mself on the beauty of melancholy and the mystery of the afterlife to the point of extreme emotion, while Emerson relayed beauty through the Oversoul. Both revolutionaries of nineteenth century poetry, their works will continue to place a sense of beauty in all who reads them, and live up to the saying: --beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
In conclusion, we can see that the two poems differ greatly in the feelings they project through mood and literacy devices. However, the poems do have one thing in common in that they both portray the same sentient of concern over plants that the authors clearly care a lot about.
Both poets captured the romantic period essentials and combined their works to create masterpieces. Th...
When considering the structure of the poems, they are similar in that they are both written loosely in iambic pentameter. Also, they both have a notable structured rhyme scheme.
No two poems are ever exactly the same. This can be shown in two of Emily Dickinson’s poems “Hope” is the Thing with Feathers and Because I could not stop for Death. If you take these two poems and compare them you will find some similarities, but overall there are a lot more differences that set them apart. She may stick to writing about topics she knows like life, nature, love, death, and religion but she makes sure that the detail in each one is different and unique. In “Hope” is the Thing with Feathers and Because I could not stop for Death there are difference in the speaker, theme, and imagery used throughout the poems.
Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost both think that individuality is very important to a person, equally like Ralph Emerson. Although they may have a lot in common, these poets are different in many ways. Both Frost and Dickinson were American poets and were both from New England. A big similarity between Frost and Dickinson. Both talk about death.
Even though Plato and Aristotle lived in the same country during the same time period and Plato was Aristotle’s teacher, they had very different ideas about politics and metaphysics while both maintaining traditional ancient Greek ethics.
...milarly, Plato says that Poetry has the same effect on us when it refers to sex and violence, arousing an array of ‘desires and feelings of pleasure and pain… it waters them when they ought to be left to whither, and makes them control us when we ought, in the interests of our own greater welfare and happiness, to control them.’ What this indicates from a rational perspective is that imitation brings undesirable emotions to our surface, allowing it to cloud our judgement, weaken our psychological stability and change our outlook on life itself. This could therefore have a drastic effect, according to Plato, on the present and future guardians who are required by the rest of us to remain emotionally stable and in full control of their own irrational desires and fears.
Poetry, with its focus on mimesis or imitation, has no moral value. While Plato sees reality as a shadow of a realm of pure Ideas (which in turn is copied by art), Aristotle sees reality as a process of partially realized forms moving towards their ideal realizations. Given this idea by Aristotle, the mimetic quality of art is redefined as the duplication of the living process of nature and its need to reach its potential form. Art, then, for Aristotle, does not become the enemy of society if the artist is loyal to the representation of the process of becoming in nature. Horace, like Aristotle and Plato, also brings to view a theory of poetry as mimesis.
In conclusion, I believe Plato is correct in assuming that poetry only influences for ill. Plato’s metaphysics state that humans live in a lower form of reality relative to the Universe of the Forms and so humans are limited within this tangible world to do human-like acts, which are not perfect but can try to be. Respondents would not be able to differ what is real (in the Republic) and what is not, because they would believe poets to be the knower of all things. There would be no other reason that poets would write such eloquently that they would shake the core of the hearts of people. This is the problem, for the Republic to run according Plato’s strategy; poets must not be allowed for they deter reason by emotionally over influencing this utopian society.