The influence of Giordano Bruno on the writings of Sir Philip Sidney

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 195-204)The relationship between Sir Philip Sidney, renowned Elizabethan courtier and writer, and the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno has not been satisfactorily established, nor has the effect of that relationship on Sidney's thought and writings. This study explores the nature of the relationship and the influence it had on Sidney's literary work. Bruno spent some twenty-eight months in England--from 1583 to 1585--and. became a member of an intellectual circle that included Sidney. The two men came from different countries, social backgrounds, and religious persuasions, but they shared a common intellectual milieu which could account for many similarities in the works of the two men. Bruno, however, was unique in Elizabethan England. He was a brilliant but erratic philosopher, who launched from the Copernican theory his own cosmological philosophy based on his concept of an infinite universe. A self-defrocked priest, Bruno longed for a world united under "natural" religion, a sort of pagan pantheism known as Hermetism. Sidney was the ideal courtier, versatile and talented. He shared with Bruno the ideal of a re-united Christendom, but Sidney's efforts--at least prior to his meeting with Bruno--were directed toward establishing a Protestant League. Traces of Bruno's uniqueness, verbal and ideological, in Sidney's writings, then, would suggest influence. ..