이사벨라의 선택: 자에는 자로에 나타난 구교적 독신주의와 신교적 결혼관？

Abstract

Sung-Won ChoIn Measure for Measure Isabella encounters a moment of crisis or dilemma twice, not once. Focused on her choice of chastity upon Angelo's malicious demand of her body, critics tend to put a heavier emphasis on discussing the issues of human sexuality such as male illicit desire, sexual contamination, virginal abstinence, female chastity, etc, when they talk about Isabella's problem. Thus, Isabella's decision has often been viewed under a moralistic light, and her choice of her chastity over her brothers life also been devalued as selfish, cruel, or inhumane. And this humanistic or moralistic tendency in the criticism of the play has left the second dilemma of Isabella, whether or not she should accept the Dukes proposal at the end, less problematic, unexplored, and even disregarded. Seen from Isabella's point of view, however, the dukes proposal appears to be as a serious and challenging problem as Angelo's demand was; for Isabella being a nun, both cases require an answer involving a possibility of her giving up her religious vocation, i.e., that of apostasy. In order to understand what might actually have happened in Isabella's mind at these times of her spiritual crisis―Angelo's abduction and the Duke's proposal―this study attempts to reread the fundamental nature of her dilemma of chastity in the contemporary religious context of Renaissance England. Provided that Shakespeare wrote Measure for Measure and had it performed at a time when Catholic monasticism was virtually non-existent and both nunneries and monasteries had already been abolished, this study will eventually lead into the conclusion that it is the Protestant ideal of chaste marriage that constantly undermines the Catholic advocacy of purist celibacy represented by Isabella and drives her into the world of holy matrimony.