Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, University of Augsburg (Institut für Englische Sprachwissenschaft), course: Myth and Mythology in English Literature, language: English, abstract: William Shakespeare is and has always been one of the most read authors of all times. His stories, books, plays and even poems have been discussed and analysed several times and still play an important role in our society as new interpretations and adaptions surface on a daily basis. Pupils still have to read his plays in school and more and more movie and theatre productions seem to find their way into the world of Broadway and Hollywood. However, with today's impact of multimedia technology on society and applied arts a great amount of people forget to look deeper into the real meaning and the controversial issues that Shakespeare dealt with and tried to portray in his written work. Therefore, there has been the development of gender studies and queer theory that tries to have a closer look at Shakespeare and his use of sexual intentions: "So much sex is readily apparent in Shakespeare [...] [and] every play is shot with sexual puns." (Wells 1) One of Shakespeare's best known and most dealt with publications, in regard to gender studies, is his poem Venus and Adonis from 1593, which marks his first published work ever and incorporates two of the best known figures of Greek mythology that were first dealt with in Ovid's Metamorphoses (cf. Shakespeare 125). However, when it comes to their character traits and their course of action, one can notice that both of them adopt attributes from the opposite sex leading to a confusion in terms of gender roles. Both Venus and Adonis slip into the opposite sex when it comes to their physical appearance as well as to their actions and both of them make it quite clear that the poem does not deal with a story of real love, but with unrequited lust instead. In order to show this, this term paper in hand tries to analyse the main protagonists of the poem Venus and Adonis by focusing on their physical appearance as well as on their behaviour towards one another. Furthermore, the slight differences between the original myth itself by Ovid and Shakespeare's altered version will be taken into account in order to show the meaning and to highlight the functions of Shakespeare's version. Finally, this term paper will focus on two highly important symbols which would be the boar and ultimately Adonis' metamorphosis since both have an important meaning in regard to the portrayal of Venus, the Goddess of Love and her object of desire, Adonis.

With its blend of pathos and erotic comedy, Venus and Adonis (1593) was the poem that made Shakespeare's reputation, but it has been strangely neglected by modern criticism. In Variable Passions it finally receives the kind of close sequential reading that has previously been reserved for the Sonnets. Anthony Mortimer's stimulating and meticulous study illuminates the poem's startling shifts in tone, its subtle means of continuity and its witty inversion of gender roles. This work breaks new ground in seeing Venus and Adonis in relation not only to its Ovidian source but also to the whole continental tradition of Venus and Adonis poems. What emerges is a Shakespeare acutely conscious both of the relevance and irrelevance of myth and of the functions and dysfunctions of rhetoric.

This is the first collection of critical essays devoted exclusively to Shakespeare's first published work, his long narrative poem Venus and Adonis which established his reputation as the literary darling of London and the heir of Ovid. Particularly important is the book's coverage of the little-known presence of Venus and Adonis on stage.A s

In our culture, Shakespeare's works are classics and his characters have achieved mythical status. But what did William Shakespeare consider to be the great myths and classics? And who were the empowering role models for his bold and unforgettable heroines? In plays and poems throughout his career, Shakespeare explored many facets of the divine feminine, including Greek and Roman goddesses— he nearly deified Queen Elizabeth. His characters frequently refer to classical goddesses, some plays feature literal appearances of goddesses onstage, and the goddess of love starred in his epic poem Venus and Adonis. Shakespeare's Goddess explores the poet's many representations of the divine feminine, as a pantheon of individual deities, and also as diverse manifestations of a single, multifaceted goddess. This thoroughly researched sequel to Supernatural Shakespeare: Magic and Ritual in Merry Old England will appeal to scholars, but its playful and engaging tone also makes it accessible to anyone who appreciates Shakespeare.

During his lifetime Shakespeare's fame as a poet equaled and perhaps outstripped his fame as a playwright. His most popular poem was Venus and Adonis. It was reprinted nine times in his lifetime, and there are more surviving references to Venus and Adonis than to any of Shakespeare's plays. The poem was most likely written in 1592, when London's theaters were closed due to an outbreak of plague, and was first published in 1593. The poem, which Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter, retells an ancient Mediterranean myth about a beautiful boy, Adonis, who has no interest in love or sex. He spends all his time hunting instead. Venus, the goddess of sexual love, falls in love with Adonis at first sight, and spends most of the poem trying to seduce him, or at least to prevent him from leaving. At the end of the poem, Adonis is killed by a boar while hunting, and Venus transforms his body into a flower as a way of remembering him.Shakespeare took the story of Venus and Adonis from an epic poem called Metamorphoses, by the Roman writer Ovid. Many poets in Renaissance Europe borrowed stories from Ovid, and by the time Shakespeare wrote Venus and Adonis the Ovid-inspired narrative poem was a popular genre in England. Like Metamorphoses, Shakespeare's poem focuses on the uncontrollable power of sexual desire. Venus takes upon herself the role of aggressive seducer, which in Elizabethan England was reserved for male lovers. Adonis speaks only eighty-eight of the poem's eleven hundred lines, and when he does speak, he tries to convince Venus he's too young to love her, and is only interested in hunting: "I know not love, ' quoth he, 'nor will not know it, / Unless it be a boar, and then I chase it." Venus seems to not care about the age difference or Adonis's indifference. Because she is a goddess, she is able to pick Adonis up and tuck him under her arm, and she physically restrains him when he tries to leave. Adonis protests that Venus doesn't love him, but is just overcome with lust. The effect is comic, but Venus's aggressive sexuality also challenges conventional Elizabethan ideas about gender.The style of Venus and Adonis is erotic and highly visual. A great deal of the poem is given over to descriptions of the characters' bodies and the natural world. These descriptions are sensual and lush. The colors red and white appear over and over again. A lover's skin is a "whiter hue than white"; Adonis's mouth is a "ruby-colour'd portal"; his face is caught "'Twixt crimson shame, and anger ashy pale"; Venus has "wax-red lips." The red-and-white motif foreshadows the white tusks of the boar which will spill Adonis's red blood, as well as "his pale cheeks and the blood / Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood."The visual style of Venus and Adonis helps to underline that it's a poem primarily about physical beauty. When Adonis turns into a flower at the end of the poem, Venus picks him from the ground and tucks him into her breast, to keep him close to her always. This transformation of Adonis from a hunter into a flower completes the idea of Venus as the active, powerful character in the poem, while Adonis plays the passive role.

Taking cross-disciplinary and comparative approaches to the volume’s subject, this exciting collection of essays offers a reassessment of Shakespeare’s erotic and Ovidian mythology within classical and continental aesthetic contexts. Through extensive examination of mythological visual and textual material, scholars explore the transmission and reinvention of Ovidian eroticism in Shakespeare’s plays to show how early modern artists and audiences collectively engaged in redefining ways of thinking pleasure. Within the collection’s broad-ranging investigation of erotic mythology in Renaissance culture, each chapter analyses specific instances of textual and pictorial transmission, reception, and adaptation. Through various critical strategies, contributors trace Shakespeare’s use of erotic material to map out the politics and aesthetics of pleasure, unravelling the ways in which mythology informs artistic creation. Received acceptions of neo-platonic love and the Petrarchan tensions of unattainable love are revisited, with a focus on parodic and darker strains of erotic desire, such as Priapic and Dionysian energies, lustful fantasy and violent eros. The dynamics of interacting tales is explored through their structural ability to adapt to the stage. Myth in Renaissance culture ultimately emerges not merely as near-inexhaustible source material for the Elizabethan and Jacobean arts, but as a creative process in and of itself.

Essay from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 68 von 80 (Grade B), Anglia Ruskin University (English Department), course: Poetry from Marlowe to Milton, language: English, abstract: Dieses Essay beschäftigt sich mit dem Thema der Verführung in zwei Gedichten der englischen Renaissance, die anhand dieser Thematik kontrastiv verglichen werden. Es handelt sich um Shakespeares "Venus and Adonis" and Marlowes "Hero and Leander", die auf verschiedene Art und Weise ein potentielles Liebespaar beschreiben. Nach einer kurzen Einordnung in die Literatur der Zeit erfolgt dann die Analyse der beiden Gedichte. This essay deals with the theme of seduction in two poems of the English Renaissance (namely Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis" and Marlowe's "Hero and Leander"), which are compared with each other to point out not only similarities but also differences in the way this topic is treated by the poets. After a short introduction to love poems in the English Renaissance the two poems are analysed in depth.