“그대의 발자취”: 『선녀여왕』 제 4권과 초서

Abstract

In Canto 2, Book 4 of The Faerie Queene, praising Geoffrey Chaucer as a “renowmed Poet” and “well of English undefyled,” Edmund Spenser declares that he would complete Chaucer’s The Squire’s Tale by following “the footing of [Chaucer’s] feete.” It seems, however, that Spenser neither completes Chaucer’s unfinished work, nor does the part in which he deals with Cambel and Canacee occupy the center of Book 4. As a matter of fact, rather complicated stories of and between Britomart, Amoret, Scudamoure, Artegall, and Florimell take up the major part of the work, which is supposed to deal with a friendship between Cambel and Telamond. Furthermore, unlike the preceding books, Book 4 does not present a hero who ultimately achieves a given task at the end of the work. Redcross, Guyon, and Britomart, the heroes of the three preceding books, all defeat the villains eventually, so as to accomplish their missions. Book 4, however, ends with the reunion of Florimell and Marinell occasioned by the marriage of personified rivers. Why, then, the poet draws Chaucer in his work and calls it “the Legend of Cambel and Telamond, or Friendship”? Does friendship indeed function as a central motif of the work? Who is the hero of the work, or is there any? What does the story of Cambel and Telamond have to do with other episodes? While examining Chaucer’s The Squire’s Tale and Book 4 of The Faerie Queene together, this paper is to provide certain answers to these questions and consequently to understand Spenser’s idea of true friendship manifested in Book 4 of The Faerie Queene.