『크로일러와 크레시다』: 확실성과 절대성의 상실

Abstract

This thesis aims at proving firstly that characters in Troilus and Cressida such as Troilus and Achilles are not unified and fixed and secondly that the characteristics of the characters represent the situation and philosophy of the late Elizabethan period. The period was the age of uncertainty. The reign was unstable because the queen was aging and the country had no successor. Furthermore, England was becoming increasingly distant from 'universal' Catholicism and its loyalty to one ruler was gradually getting transferred to that of 'the notion of nation'. The medieval values that had been represented as unity and singleness were disappearing. And Magellan's achievement, Copernicus's study, and Columbus‘ discovery gave the period strong anxiety and confusion, because, with those new discoveries, everything that was once true and fixed could not get the same status any more. So these discoveries became a force that caused scepticism to emerge. Therefore, the Elizabethan age experienced the emerging force of a new philosophy named Scepticism whose basis was on Pyrrhonism of the Greek period. Erasmus and Montaigne, the representative philosophers of the age, were the typical sceptics. The slogans of Pyrrhonism are 'I can't understand anything', or 'I can't determine anything'. The latter signifies that I(the speaking subject) am not in the state of mind to insist or deny anything, which is an attitude that delays the final judgement. This attitude makes it impossible to judge that anything is right or false. So everything in the world is in a state of indeterminacy. Troilus insists that he is a true person and his loving mind to Cressida will never change. But against what he says earlier, he acts and says differently later. At first he was a unified person believing that his loving mind will be eternal, but when the situation shifts, he changes too, therefore the absolute value disappears in him. When Troilus sees Cressida give his gift to Diomedes, he experiences the denial of his senses, which is the attitude of scepticism. According to scepticism, the senses don't give any guidelines of judgement of events. Achilles also shows the absence of absolute values. At first, he is indulged into his private world, not fighting in the battlefield, but enjoying mimicking games in his tent which is his closet. He does not do any heroic acts, on the contrary, what he does is all the time unheroic, diminishing his fame. However, when he encounters the hypothesis of Ulysses that present eyes praise only present heroic acts, not the past acts, he completely changes. He tries to be a heroic person to be praised by the people and to attain fame again. Ulysses' hypothesis denies the absolute value and affirms that all values change with the passing of time. Achilles succumbs to the idea that all things are changeable within the frame of time. Not only Troilus and Achilles, but also many other main characters in the play such as Cressida, Ulysses, and Hector are neither fixed nor unified. The world in the play shows no certainty, because one conviction and one judgement are soon denied by the characters' next experiences and events. Troilus and Cressida as the most 'modern' work by Shakespeare reveals the idea that we, human beings, live in a constantly changing world which has no absolute values.