Sidney, Gentili, and the Poetics of Embassy

Abstract

Early modern Europe was newly concerned with diplomacy as a representative art. Medieval diplomatic messengers gradually gave way to ambassadors acting in the ongoing interests of sovereign states. The introduction of the permanent embassy is symptomatic of this transition from a series of communications to an art and practice of representation.1 Literature is also an art and practice of representation and the parallel was not lost on early modern diplomatic theorists. Their understanding of the ambassador as a faithful and persuasive representative of his sovereign, in word and deed, placed diplomatic theory in conversation with theories of rhetorical, poetic and dramatic representation.2 As many theorists noted, the Romans called ambassadors oratores, or orators, and early modern diplomatic treatises repeatedly ask how to use words well. This rhetorical approach was rooted in the broader literary and philosophical concerns of Renaissance humanism, which also shaped the period ’s literature and poetics. From the composition of Ambaxiator Brevilogus in 1436 to the 1680 publication of L’Ambassadeur et ses fonctions, European treatises on embassy engaged with many of the same rhetorical and representational considerations as contemporary European literature. These crossovers between literature and diplomacy were equally clear to literary authors. European writers as wide-ranging and influential as Torquato Tasso, LuÍs de CamÕes and Pierre Corneille drew on the analogies between literary and diplomatic representation.3 This essay traces one exceptionally important and previously unstud—ied instance of this dialogue between diplomatic theory and literary representation. It examines the personal and intellectual exchange that took place between the diplomatic theorist Alberico Gentili and the poet, diplomat and literary theorist Sir Philip Sidney in early modern England. Gentili was an Italian civil lawyer and professor at Oxford University.