Identify the correct ones among the following:
A) The Apologie for Poetrie was written by Sir Philip Sidney.
B) Sir Philip Sidney wrote the Apologie for Poetrie as a counterblast to Stephen Gosson’s The School of Abuse
C) Stephen Gosson wrote The School of Abuse in the euphuistic style
D) Sidney’s style was characterised by neoclassical restraint.
E) Sidney and Gosson wrote their critical treatise in the eighteenth century.
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:

The correct answer is A, B and C only.

Let us analyze each statement step-by-step to understand why they are correct or incorrect:

Statement A is correct: An Apology for Poetry (also known as The Defence of Poesy) is indeed one of the most important works of literary criticism of the Elizabethan era, written by the English poet, courtier, and soldier Sir Philip Sidney around 1580 and published posthumously in 1595.

Statement B is correct: Stephen Gosson published a puritanical attack on poetry, drama, and art titled The School of Abuse in 1579, dedicatng it to Sidney without his permission. Sidney was provoked by this treatise and wrote An Apology for Poetry as a direct defense of the creative arts, serving as a counterblast to Gosson's arguments.

Statement C is correct: Stephen Gosson wrote The School of Abuse employing the popular "euphuistic style." This literary style is characterized by elaborate, ornate language, symmetry, antithesis, alliteration, and frequent rhetorical references to classical myths and natural history.

Statement D is incorrect: Sidney's style in the treatise is marked by Elizabethan courtly eloquence, classical rhetorical structure, and humanist passion rather than the "neoclassical restraint" that characterized the later Augustan and Restoration periods of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Statement E is incorrect: Both Sidney's An Apology for Poetry (written circa 1580) and Gosson's The School of Abuse (published in 1579) were composed in the late 16th century during the English Renaissance (Elizabethan era), not the 18th century.