CRITICISM

Brown, Huntington. “Venus and Adonis: The Action, the Narrator, and the Critics.” Michigan Academician 2, no. 2 (fall 1969): 73-87.

Reviews twentieth-century criticism of Venus and Adonis, challenging the views of critics who offer disparaging interpretations of the poem, its characters, or its action.

Cantelupe, Eugene B. “An Iconographical Interpretation of Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare's Ovidian Comedy.” Shakespeare Quarterly 14, no. 2 (spring 1963): 141-51.

Studies the poem in its relation to the iconographical tradition depicting the myth of Venus and Adonis, and maintains that Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis is not only erotic and entertaining, but morally didactic.

Daigle, Lennet J. “Venus and Adonis: Some Traditional Contexts.” Shakespeare Studies 13 (1980): 31-46.

Maintains that the poem should be studied in terms of its allegorical aspects and characterization, and offers a reading informed by classical, medieval, and Renaissance material pertaining to Venus.

Dubrow, Heather. “‘Upon misprision growing’: Venus and Adonis.” In Captive Victors: Shakespeare's Narrative Poems and Sonnets, pp. 21-79. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987.

Analyzes Shakespeare's depiction of Venus, asserting that the characterization of the goddess is to a large degree shaped by issues of genre. The critic demonstrates the way in which Shakespeare manipulates Ovid's mythological poem into a genre that allows for both the creation of complicated characters and for the evoking of varied responses to these characters.

Duncan-Jones, Katherine. “Much Ado with Red and White: The Earliest Readers of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis (1593).” The Review of English Studies 44, no. 176 (November 1993): 479-501.

Examines early responses to Venus and Adonis, finding that the poem, interpreted by many Elizabethans as exemplifying the rhetoric of courtship, was sometimes interpreted as referring to specific individuals.

Miller, Robert P. “The Myth of Mars's Hot Minion in Venus and Adonis.” ELH 26, no. 4 (December 1959): 470-81.

Demonstrates the ways in which Venus's account of her relationship with Mars in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis differs from the telling of the tale in Ovid and directly contradicts traditional commentary on the myth of Venus and Mars.

Mortimer, Anthony. “The Ending of Venus and Adonis.” English Studies 78, no. 4 (July 1997): 334-41.

Compares the ending of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis with the ending of the tale in Book X of Ovid's Metamorphoses, commenting on the effectiveness of Shakespeare's treatment of the ending.

Pegg, Barry. “Generation and Corruption in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis.” Michigan Academician 8, no. 1 (summer 1975): 105-15.

Offers an alternative approach to Neoplatonic interpretations of Venus and Adonis, showing how natural philosophy, or the science of Shakespeare's time, can be used to illuminate apparent inconsistencies in the text and to reveal the dark outlook of the poem.

Putney, Rufus. “Venus and Adonis: Amour with Humor.” Philological Quarterly 20, no. 4 (October 1941): 533-48.

Suggests that Elizabethan readers enjoyed the rhetorical ingenuity of the conceits contained in Venus and Adonis, even though later commentators failed to appreciate these elements of comedy and tragicomedy.

Rothenberg, Alan Baer. “The Oral Rape Fantasy and Rejection of Mother in the Imagery of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis.” Psychoanalytic Quarterly 40, no. 3 (1971): 447-68.

Offers a psychoanalytic exploration of the mother-child relationship as it is presented in the imagery of Venus and Adonis.