Apocalyptic History and the Protestant Cause in Sir Philip Sidney’s Revised Arcadia

This interdisciplinary project offers a rereading of the 1590 Arcadia as an apocalyptic allegory, maintaining that Sidney’s revised work participates in contemporary debates on church reform and church history in previously unrecognized ways. The book views Sidney’s work in relationship to Protestant Revelation commentaries and apocalyptic church histories and treatises on church reform by Philippe Du Plessis Mornay, George Gifford, William Fulke, Heinrich Bullinger, John Foxe, John Bale, and others. The interpretation is supported by careful analysis of Sidney’s additions to and alterations of the original Arcadia, as well as of his allusions to and reworkings of prior epics.