On The Self-fashioning In Ben Jonson’s Volpone

From Middle Ages to Renaissance,the self-consciousness and selfunderstanding of “man”,separating from subordination of a certain subjective category,came to become an objective and independent self-examination.During the time,“Renaissance Man”,gradually altering imitation and worship of Greek gods and Jesus to themselves,began the path of self-fashioning resulted from the selfevaluation and self-appreciation.How should a person undertake self-fashioning? How to achieve perfection? Ben Jonson,as the first England Laureate Poet and the only dramatist of equal standing with Shakespeare,through his masterpiece comedy Volpone,criticizes,taunts and exalts three kinds of self-fashioning.Behind the complicated plots and humorous episodes lies a serious reflection upon this popular topic during Renaissance.This dissertation mainly consists of three body parts,each of which has similar structures.Every section begins with discussing one self-fashioning prototype,including the image of a perfect prince advocated in Machiavelli’s political treaty The Prince: he should master the art of pretense just like a fox and to obtain his ends by any means;a portrait of a perfect courtier and a gentle woman presented in Baldassare Castiglione’s Platonic fictional dialogue The Book of the Courtier: the former is required to know art and martial,use beautiful and proper languages,the latter to have attractive appearance as well as knowledge and artistic skills,with both “recklessly” showing themselves;a perfect person in Edmund Spenser’s heroic poem The Faerie Queene: he or she should embody the “twelve” Aristotle virtues and spirits like “justice”,“temperance” and “chastity”.The second section pays attention to Volpone itself,arguing the main three groups of characters in the play respectively represent the three foresaid self-fashionings,namely Machiavellian,Castiglional and Spenserian self-fashioning.Therefore,as a loyal reader and translator of Horace,Jonson expresses what he believes the true and sublime self-fashioning,thus inheriting and deepening the classic principle championed by Horace---“Poems should either profit or delight”.The third section from a historical perspective explores the reasons why Jonson,juxtaposing imaginary factors and realistic elements,chooses Venice,“an another world” called by Petrarch as the locale of Volpone,and proposes that the three self-fashionings in fact provoke and mutually echo with Venice’s Virtue,Vogue and Vice,thus revealing Jonson’s typical creating principle.