“Till I in hand her yet halfe trembling tooke”: Doctrines of Justification in Edmund Spenser’s <i>Amoretti</i>
Why this work is in the frame
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
This article claims there is an underlying soteriological conceit in Spenser’s Amoretti (1595) concerning the roles that “works” and “grace” play in the beloved’s requital: roles with theological analogues in justification, the means by which people were declared righteous before God. I show how Spenser’s lover struggles with works-righteousness, and how Spenser betrays “Protestant” thought about the inadequacy of works even as his lover insists upon them. Spenser’s lover fails repeatedly in his labours until grace comes to him, unwilled, in a moment of concession. His “works” afterward become meaningful—but only according to the reformed understanding by which good works come after faith. Still, a doctrinal line cannot be perfectly drawn, since requital is effected through poetic labour. I propose this irresolution is a consequence of Spenser’s attention to Paul’s Epistles, and their occasional affirmations of the usefulness of law despite their overwhelming insistence on grace. It also stems from the lack of a reformed doctrinal consensus about the role of works after justification.
 Cet article avance qu’il y a une dimension sotériologique sous-jacente dans l’Amoretti de Spenser (1595), en se basant sur le rôle des « oeuvres » et de la « grâce » dans la recompense du bien-aimé, rôle trouvant des correspondances théologiques dans la justification et les moyens par lesquels on est déclaré juste devant Dieu. On montre comment l’amoureux de Spenser lutte avec la notion de vertu par les oeuvres, et comment Spenser lui-même fait paraître des idées protestantes au sujet de l’insuffisance des oeuvres, même lorsque son personnage insiste sur leur utilité. Ainsi, le personnage de l’amoureux échoue systématiquement dans ses oeuvres, jusqu’à ce que la grâce lui soit octroyée, sans qu’il l’ait cherchée, et dans un moment de concession. Ce n’est qu’après cela que ses oeuvres trouvent une signification, mais seulement selon l’idée réformée que les bonnes oeuvres sont une conséquence de la foi. Toutefois, on ne peut déduire une ligne doctrinale parfaitement claire de l’oeuvre de Spenser, puisque la récompense y passe par le travail poétique. On propose d’expliquer cette ambivalence par l’attention que Spenser prête aux épîtres de Paul, lesquelles affirment occasionnellement l’utilité de la Loi malgré leur insistance répétée sur l’importance de la grâce. On peut également l’expliquer par l’absence de consensus doctrinal chez les Réformés quant au rôle des oeuvres après le salut par la foi.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it