Asals, Heather. "Venus and Adonis: The Education of the Goddess." Studies in English Literature 13, No. 1 (Winter 1973): 31-51.

Examines Venus's behavior in relation to Platonic doctrine and argues that Shakespeare's Venus progresses from a state of lust for Adonis to love for him. Asals goes on to analyze the type of death represented by the boar, as lust, and by Venus, as love.

Beauregard, David N. "Venus and Adonis: Shakespeare's Representation of the Passions." Shakespeare Studies VIII (1975): 83-98.

Maintains that the Renaissance concept of the "concupiscible" and "irascible" aspects of the human soul governs the action of the poem. Beauregard shows how concubiscibility gives rise to Venus's love, desire, and joy; and Adonis's hate, aversion, and sorrow, and how irascibility produces Venus's feelings of hope, despair, courage, fear, and anger after Adonis leaves her.

Belsey, Catherine. "Love as Trompe-l'oeil: Taxonomies of Desire in Venus and Adonis." Shakespeare Quarterly 46, No. 3 (Fall 1995): 257-76.

Argues that the text of Venus and Adonis is a kind of trompe-l'oeil, a text that tantalizes but witholds finality and closure. Belsey proposes that the poem marks a "specific moment in the cultural history of love." She traces the medieval and Renaissance history of literary depictions of love and lust and identifies the place of Venus and Adonis in this history.

Bowers, A. Robin. '"Hard Amours' and 'Delicate Amours' in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis." Shakespeare Studies XII (1979): 1-23.

In an effort to reconcile the seemingly contradictory moods of the poem, examines the traditional associations of a boar with lust and of a kiss with yielding to temptation. Bowers demonstrates that the poem progresses from humor to tragedy with Adonis's succumbing to lust and suffering the fatal consequences of doing so.

Cantelupe, Eugene B. "An Iconographical Interpretation of Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare's Ovidian Comedy." Shakespeare Quarterly, XIV, No. 2 (Spring 1963): 141-51.

Compares Shakespeare's poem with other literary and pictorial representations of Venus and Adonis and conludes that this work parodies traditional presentations of the mythical lovers and satirizes Neoplatonic concepts of love. Cantelupe also comments on the didactic message imparted by the poem.

Dickey, Franklin M. "Attitudes toward Love in Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece." In Not Wisely But Too Well: Shakespeare's Love Tragedies, pp. 46-62. San Marino, CA: The Huntington Library, 1957.

States that a knowledge of "contemporary doctrine" allows modern readers of the poem access to the understanding that Shakespeare's peers had of the poem. Dickey attempts to demonstrate that the poem reflects Renaissance beliefs about love and lust and points out that while Venus presents a convincing case for lust, at the height of her passion she is depicted in an unflattering way.

Greenfield, Sayre N. "Allegorical Impulses and Critical Ends: Shakespeare's and Spenser's Venus and Adonis." Criticism 36, No. 4 (Fall 1994): 475-98.

Compares the allegorical elements in Venus and Adonis and Spenser's The Faerie Queene. Greenfield maintains that while The Faerie Queene often ellicits allegorical readings, Venus and Adonis does not yield allegorical interpretations until the twentieth century, despite the Renaissance tradition of interpreting classical instances of Venus and Adonis allegorically.

Lanham, Richard A. "The Ovidian Shakespeare: Venus and Adonis and Lucrece." In The Motives of Eloquence: Literary Rhetoric in the Renaissance, pp. 82-110. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1976.

Identifies two distinct but interrelated antitheses in Venus and Adonis: an ethical opposition of sexuality and virtue, and an aesthetic opposition of the goddess's eloquence and the boy's spare speech. The poem's rhetoric is dramatized and incorporated into the narrative as the two characters debate moral issues.

Panofsky, Erwin. "Titian and Ovid." In Problems in Titian: Mostly Iconographie, pp. 139-71. New York: New York University Press, 1969.

Maintains that Titian created the character of the reluctant Adonis in his 1554 painting of the goddess and the young hunter. Panofsky maintains that Shakespeare's poem sounds "like a poetic paraphrase of Titian's composition."

Sheidley, William E. '"Unless it Be a Boar': Love and Wisdom in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis." Modern Language Quarterly 35, No. 1 (March 1974): 3-15.

Refutes critical theories that Venus and Adonis offers an ambivalent perspective on love, countering that the poem intentionally offers a multiplicity of viewponts.

Sorelius, Gunnar. "Interchapter: Shakespeare's Mannerism—The Early Histories, Titus Andronicus, The Rape of Lucrece and Venus and Adonis." In Shakespeare's Early Comedies: Myth, Metamorphosis, Mannerism, pp. 95-117. UPPSALA, 1993.

Examines the comic aspects of Venus and Adonis, noting that the story is a tragic one, but the "lightness and elegance of tone" and the poem's humour are maintained throughout the length of the work.