르네상스 소네트 속의 죽음관: 시드니, 셰익스피어, 그리고 그레빌을 중심으로

Abstract

What would Renaissance poets have thought about death? This paper investigates various concepts of death employed in Renaissance sonnets sequences. Death was traditionally understood as a law of nature or a direct punishment for Adam's disobedience. The major change in the response to death in the Renaissance was growing emphasis on the individuality of death as Protestant doctrine results in individual and inward meditation. Investigating Renaissance ideas of death leads to an examination of three basic concepts related to death: sin, time, and mortality. Petrarchan poet-lovers like Sir Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare, and Fulke Greville write about their intense experiences of love followed by the acute meditation on human misery and the conflict between ideal aspiration and real passion. “Loving in truth”, Sidney concentrates on love in the present and triumphs over time not by escaping but by choosing to remain forever in the paradoxical state of sweet sorrow. Obsessed about immortal fame, Shakespeare reveals the will to overcome death through his works but eventually admits that death prevails over nature and man. Greville follows the lead of his friend Sidney in posing the problem of love as a seemingly impossible choice between virtuous love and individual desire. Confronted with the problem of human love and faced with its frustrations, Greville meditates on human misery and sinfulness. Greville solves the dilemma of love by rejecting love and casting himself entirely upon the saving grace of God. Caelica, a collection of Greville's autobiographical works, constitutes the process of experience that the knowledge of sin leads to the knowledge of humility and ends in the renewal of faith before death. Writing about what it is to love does not prevent these writers from discovering and showing distinct and individual meditation of death.