{"title":"Spenser's Faerie Virtues and the Tautology of Occasion","authors":"John E. Curran Jr","doi":"10.1353/pgn.2024.a935333","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>This article focuses on the treatment of occasion through the even-numbered books of 'The Faerie Queene', a pattern which constitutes part of the poem's incorporation of logic into moral thinking. Spenser's 'pleasing Analysis' of virtue ethics has two senses of 'Methode', the analytic and the cryptic. Whereas for the humans logic is integrated into how they exercise virtue and advance their own and our understanding of it, the virtues patronised by faerie knights, Temperance, Friendship, and Courtesy, while they use logic, are surreptitiously revealed to depend on circular reasoning. For these more tautological virtues, the cryptical method allows for inversion and redundancy geared both to exalt virtue and to gloss over conceptual limitations in received traditions of virtue ethics. Occasion marks a specific means to observe this hidden circularity.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":43576,"journal":{"name":"PARERGON","volume":"59 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"PARERGON","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pgn.2024.a935333","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"MEDIEVAL & RENAISSANCE STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract:
This article focuses on the treatment of occasion through the even-numbered books of 'The Faerie Queene', a pattern which constitutes part of the poem's incorporation of logic into moral thinking. Spenser's 'pleasing Analysis' of virtue ethics has two senses of 'Methode', the analytic and the cryptic. Whereas for the humans logic is integrated into how they exercise virtue and advance their own and our understanding of it, the virtues patronised by faerie knights, Temperance, Friendship, and Courtesy, while they use logic, are surreptitiously revealed to depend on circular reasoning. For these more tautological virtues, the cryptical method allows for inversion and redundancy geared both to exalt virtue and to gloss over conceptual limitations in received traditions of virtue ethics. Occasion marks a specific means to observe this hidden circularity.
期刊介绍:
Parergon publishes articles and book reviews on all aspects of medieval and early modern studies. It has a particular focus on research which takes new approaches and crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries. Fully refereed and with an international Advisory Board, Parergon is the Southern Hemisphere"s leading journal for early European research. It is published by the Australian and New Zealand Association of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (Inc.) and has close links with the ARC Network for Early European Research.