Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations and Conventions
- 1 Introduction: Reading Spenser's Language
- 2 ‘Pleasing Analysis’: Renaissance Hermeneutics, Poetry, and the Law
- 3 Results: A Survey of Spenser's Legal Diction
- 4 Property and Contract in the Quests of Florimell and Amoret
- 5 Justice, Equity and Mercy in The Legend of Artegall
- 6 Courtesy and Prerogative in The Legend of Sir Calidore
- 7 The Composition of the World: Managing Power in the Two Cantos of Mutabilitie
- 8 Lyric Opposition in Spenser, Shakespeare, and Donne
- 9 After Words
- Glossary of Selected Legal Diction in The Faerie Queene
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- Studies in Renaissance Literature
5 - Justice, Equity and Mercy in The Legend of Artegall
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations and Conventions
- 1 Introduction: Reading Spenser's Language
- 2 ‘Pleasing Analysis’: Renaissance Hermeneutics, Poetry, and the Law
- 3 Results: A Survey of Spenser's Legal Diction
- 4 Property and Contract in the Quests of Florimell and Amoret
- 5 Justice, Equity and Mercy in The Legend of Artegall
- 6 Courtesy and Prerogative in The Legend of Sir Calidore
- 7 The Composition of the World: Managing Power in the Two Cantos of Mutabilitie
- 8 Lyric Opposition in Spenser, Shakespeare, and Donne
- 9 After Words
- Glossary of Selected Legal Diction in The Faerie Queene
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- Studies in Renaissance Literature
Summary
Yt was then toulde them that the Irish themselues … weare no lawfull enemies but Rebells and Traytours and therefore they that Came to succour them no better then Roges and Runnagates speciallye Comminge with no license nor Comission from theire owne kinge, so as it shoulde be dishonorable for him in the name of his Quene to Condicion or make anye termes with suche Rascalls… whearevppon the saide Coronell did absolutely yealde himselfe and the forte with all therein and Craved onelye mercye, which it beinge not thoughte good to shewe them… theare was no other waie but to make that shorte ende of them which was made.
Edmund Spenser, A view of the present state of Ireland (ca 1596)THE CENTRAL terms of Book V, around which turn the many episodes and themes of the book, are justice, equity, and mercy. These terms are associated with Artegall, the knight of justice, at important stages of his quest: he is initially introduced not only as the ‘instrument’ of ‘iustice’ (V.proem.11), but as the pupil of the goddess Astraea, who has trained him ‘to weigh both right and wrong / In equall balance’ and ‘equitie to measure out along / According to the line of conscience’ (V.i.7). He is later known to Guyon as ‘our judge of equity’, and is rescued from Radigund's captivity by Britomart, who has herself recently visited the temple of the goddess Isis, ‘that part of Iustice, which is Equity’ (V.vii.3).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Spenser's Legal LanguageLaw and Poetry in Early Modern England, pp. 123 - 152Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2007