Venus Reconsidered: The Goddess of Love in Venus and Adonis | A. D. Cousins, Macquarie University
A. D. Cousins, Macquarie University
The how and what of Venus' presentation have been studied from mainly two angles. Sometimes she has been looked at as if a character in a play—appropriate enough given that her creator was a playwright and that he gave her speech after speech. As a result, the consistencies, fluctuations and contradictions in her characterization have been often discussed, with a good deal of agreement but by no means with unanimity.1 Sometimes she has been studied in connection with particular aspects of Renaissance symbolism or thinking about ancient myths. Critical commentary adopting that angle of approach has occasionally interpreted Venus as a simple, symbolic figure but, more usually, as an evocatively allegorical one (especially, of course, in the context of some Renaissance interpretations of the Venus and Adonis story).2 Here, employing both well established ways of approach, I want to offer a new account...
[The entire page is 7310 words long]
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