스펜서의 프로테스탄티즘: 프로테스탄티즘과 문화의 역동적 관계

Abstract

This essay tries to define how Spenser views the complex relationship between the claims of Protestantism and culture. It first introduces Reinhold Niebuhr's insightful analysis of the development and breakdown of the medieval Thomistic synthesis of Christianity and culture, not so much to provide Spenser's intellectual milieu as to illuminate the kind of synthesis of Protestantism and culture Spenser seeks in The Faerie Queene, in which both man's obligation to fulfil his/her cultural potentials and the inevitable sinfulness of his/her pretensions to perfection are equally emphasized. Next, the question of the relationship between the English Reformation and Elizabethan culture offers a concrete testing ground for whether Niebuhr's suggestion can be validly applied to Spenser's case. A concept of iconoclastic Protestantism prevalent during the Elizabethan age helps define Spenser's dynamics of Protestantism and culture. The third section of the essay criticizes three types of the synthesis of Christianity and culture frequently employed by Spenserians as intellectual frames of reference in studying Spenser's masterpiece. Both Spenser's ardent efforts to tackle the pressing moral and social issues of his time and his deeply pessimistic view of man's cultural achievements make it very hard to define his Protestantism statically. Only a dialectic interplay of Protestantism and culture does justice to Spenser's dynamic mode of thinking that constantly searches for feasible moral and social visions in the context of sin and Grace.