『선녀여왕』의 제 오 권 「정의의 전설」에 나타난 정의의 도덕적 양면성에 대한 수사학적 고찰 = A Rhetorical Study of Moral Ambivalence of the Virtue of Justice in The Faerie Queene

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The purpose of this paper is to explore moral ambivalence or ethical uncertainty of the virtue of justice in the context of Renaissance rhetorical culture and to attempt to understand the ambivalence as a rhetorical characteristic embedded in justice.
Rhetoric or the power of words is basically ambivalent, because it can be used both for good and evil. Its moral uncertainty can be also caused by its flexibility in expediency, because rhetoric deals with situations that can be changeable by the power of persuasion or human actions capable of errors or imperfect knowledge. Politics also deals with similar situations and in Renaissance rhetorical practice was an integral part of political training. Renaissance humanists believed that people could be politically trained by rhetorical practice of reading and translating classical texts. Both in rhetoric and politics, expediency which is to choose the best in a given situation governs an ethical choice. The expediency or flexible adaptability to a situation eventually opens rhetoric and politics ethical uncertainty or moral ambivalence.
Spenser's Faerie Queene is designed for the author's rhetorical/literary practice as well as the formation of readers' ethical selves through diverse levels of allegories. Book Five contains numerous allegories of the contemporary political affairs. The virtue of justice illustrates political potentialities of poetry/rhetoric and hence its ethical uncertainty. Artegall does not hesitate to use in the name of justice Machiavellian fraud, guile or force which are main weapons of those opposed to justice. Thereby, justice is blamed to be contaminated by injustice, and morally ambivalent.
However, Artegall struggles to carry out justice in a very practical world where trust or love can be changeable. In that world, his moral ambivalence can be justified as justice's expedient flexibility. Justice as a political virtue is rhetoricized through its moral uncertainty or ethical ambivalence.