ScholarWorks@숙명여자대학교

초록

Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book six deals, as we may clearly see in its subtitle "The Legend of S. Calidore or of Courtesie," with courtesy, a virtue generally manifested in how one properly reacts against others and particular circumstances. Courtesy may be defined as a display of one's good will and manners to others. When we passively take this virtue as a display, however, we may fail to understand the true meaning of Spenser's work, for the text forces us to accept the virtue of courtesy as an aggressive attitude towards the world. Courtesy, for Spenser, means a certain world view, with which a young Christian must fight against the evil, slanderous, and detractive forces in the world and crush them. This paper is to examine and analyse Spenser's courtesy and its limitations in the work through the actions of Calidore and Calipine, the two major knights of the work, so as to understand its possibilities in our own time. As both knights are endeavoring to accomplish courtesy in themselves and in the society they belong to, they do not see the fact that their real enemies are in their own minds and attitudes. Spenser tries to show that courtesy is an important virtue, which can transform the world into a better place to live. Yet the work as a whole does not seem to support that, to Spenser's disappointment, courtesy may prevail over the evils in his world, and ours as well.

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