Soldierly Training in Two Merry Tales from More’s Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation

The essay below aims to add to an existing point of discussion in the critical literature on A Dialogue of Comfort, namely the soldierly nature of Vincent’s education. In my study, I hope to demonstrate, via close readings of the first two merry tales from Book Two, that these two narratives combine to encourage Vincent to reconsider his understanding of courage. The dialogue pushes Vincent to begin to see courage as a matter of self-governance, as transcendence of fear out of preference to a superior good, rather than a matter of mere self-assertion or fearlessness

Aesthetics · Art · Assertion · Courage · Epistemology · Literature · Narrative · Point (geometry) · Preference · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Theology · Transcendence (philosophy) · Computer Science · Joseph Conrad and Literature · Leadership, Courage, and Heroism Studies · Philosophy · Psychology