신용경제와 빚진 자를 용서하기: 도시희극에 극화된 ‘자선’의 모습들
Credit Economy and Forgiving Debtors: Charities in City Comedy
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Henry Wilkinson’s The Debt Book(1625) shows a conflict of a Christian priest who witnessed the vast expansion of credit relations and with that expansion enhanced possibilities for defaults on debts. Breaking with theological tradition that prohibits all kinds of money transactions, Wilkinson acknowledges the inescapability of credit relationships and tries to inscribe them under a theological contract based on Christian love. However, the two orders he gives as a way of addressing debt problems are contradictory to each other; on the one hand, he urges borrowers to pay debts at any cost and as swiftly as possible, but on the other, he recommends lenders to pity and forgive debtors as God “forgive(s) us our debts.” Forgiveness of debts which Wilkinson justifies as an act of charity has been a solution to debt problems and it is problematic in that it allows the violation of the basic law of credit economy: fulfillment of debt obligation. Then, how can two contradictory orders be compatible with each other? What kind of role does charity-debt forgiveness play in credit economy? For whom, or for which do we need charity? This article aims to explore these questions by reading three city comedies, William Rowley’s A New Wonder, A Woman Never Vext, John Cook’s Green’s Tu Quoque, and Eastward Ho, co-authored by Ben Jonson, John Marston, and George Chapman. In city comedy, a sub-genre of the early modern drama, most characters are involved in the network of credit relations as debtors or creditors and debtors’ prisons are one of the most common settings for their stories. If debtors’ prisons are the space where Wilkinson’s two orders conflict with each other, city comedy also constructs them not only as the place of debtors’ just humiliation and punishment but also as the place of their redemption. Debtors are finally released by the exercise of charity and community is restored with it. This comic narrative seems to endorse the ideology of Christian charity as the antidote to the debt and credit problems. However, city comedy’s concern “on the present day” disrupts and transforms the narrative and plays produce a new kind of cultural narrative which implies a meaningful insight into the role of charity in credit economy.
Abstract
Henry Wilkinson’s The Debt Book(1625) shows a conflict of a Christian priest who witnessed the vast expansion of credit relations and with that expansion enhanced possibilities for defaults on debts. Breaking with theological tradition that prohibits all kinds of money transactions, Wilkinson acknowledges the inescapability of credit relationships and tries to inscribe them under a theological contract based on Christian love. However, the two orders he gives as a way of addressing debt problems are contradictory to each other; on the one hand, he urges borrowers to pay debts at any cost and as swiftly as possible, but on the other, he recommends lenders to pity and forgive debtors as God “forgive(s) us our debts.” Forgiveness of debts which Wilkinson justifies as an act of charity has been a solution to debt problems and it is problematic in that it allows the violation of the basic law of credit economy: fulfillment of debt obligation. Then, how can two contradictory orders be compatible with each other? What kind of role does charity-debt forgiveness play in credit economy? For whom, or for which do we need charity? This article aims to explore these questions by reading three city comedies, William Rowley’s A New Wonder, A Woman Never Vext, John Cook’s Green’s Tu Quoque, and Eastward Ho, co-authored by Ben Jonson, John Marston, and George Chapman. In city comedy, a sub-genre of the early modern drama, most characters are involved in the network of credit relations as debtors or creditors and debtors’ prisons are one of the most common settings for their stories. If debtors’ prisons are the space where Wilkinson’s two orders conflict with each other, city comedy also constructs them not only as the place of debtors’ just humiliation and punishment but also as the place of their redemption. Debtors are finally released by the exercise of charity and community is restored with it. This comic narrative seems to endorse the ideology of Christian charity as the antidote to the debt and credit problems. However, city comedy’s concern “on the present day” disrupts and transforms the narrative and plays produce a new kind of cultural narrative which implies a meaningful insight into the role of charity in credit economy.
참고문헌 (21)
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