Introduction: The Plurality of Early Modern Futures

Introduction: The Plurality of Early Modern Futures"Only the poet," wrote Philip Sidney, "lifted up with the vigour of his own invention, doth grow in effect into another nature, in making things either better than nature bringeth forth, or, quite anew" (2008, 216).With The Defence of Poesy (1595), composed in the early 1580s during a period of increased interest in England in the functions of literary art, Sidney imagined a new future for English literature. 1 This future was infused with a divine force of creativity that would enable writers to address the emerging challenges posed by increasingly rapid changes in English religion, politics, economy, and social organization.Sidney's view of imaginative but morally edifying literature was a response to late 16 th century critics that would have put severe limits on the uses of literature and the imagination.Instead, Sidney opened the fieldchampioning the potentially enriching nature of fiction in a positive affirmation of the writer who creates anew through words, using primarily the "zodiac of his own wit" (216).In affirming the writer's prophetic potential, he argued that literature provided not just a window into the future but could be essential to creating that future.