Perspectives on Sir Philip Sidney

Because of my need to ration time, I decided to read only a portion of Sir Philip Sidney's "An Apology for Poetry." However, what I read whet my appetite for more. Here is one quote that intrigued me:

"Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted up with the vigor of his own invention, doth grow in effect another nature, in making things either better than nature bringeth forth, or quite anew, forms such as never were in nature . . . so as he goeth hand in hand with nature, not enclosed within the narrow warrant of her gifts, but freely ranging within the zodiac of his own wit. Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as divers poets have done" (330).

Here, Sidney seems to harmonize with the Romantics in his celebration of the mind, of the wonders of the imagination. The imagination is boundless, not conformed to Nature but rather supplementing it with further adventures. Sidney celebrates the fantasy, the unrealistic. This outlook is one that sympathizes with my own, since I do not see great literature as bound by the rules of reality: animals can speak, mountains can move, and mere children can perform monumental, kingdom-saving tasks. I am not precisely clear concerning the relationship of Sir Sidney to the Neoclassical movement except that 150 years separate them. However, Sidney doesn't seem to advocate mere imitation of the past. His discourse reflects ample knowledge of classical literature, but he praises freedom and the full "zodiac of the wit," which I suppose includes the furthest reaches of the mind.

However, I should comment on the second part of this quote, the portion lauding the work of poets. The idea that poetry exceeds Nature sounds like an acceptable enough notion at first reading, but after examining this statement further, I recognized that, as a Christian, I should consider the question of authorship. By praising the creative work of Mankind over the creation of God, it appears that Sidney proposes a kind of heresy. I wonder if he recognized what he was doing since he praises the Psalms and the "inconceivable excellencies of God" elsewhere in his writing. Does he make the statement that poetry excels Nature because he sees poetry as somehow more redeemed than God's fallen Creation? Does he imply that our act of creation brings us closer to God and makes us somehow more holy than our surroundings? These questions make me yearn to read more.