Professor Catherine Belsey (University of Cardiff):
“Shakespeare and the Myth of Venus”
Abstract:
Shakespeare does not put Venus on the stage, but stories about her, inherited from Ovid, constitute a repertoire of allusions in his work. Both object and cause of desire, the goddess of love is also seen as herself desiring; she is thus the personification as well as the source of passion. Myth promises to give definitive form to powerful human experiences by tracing them back to an imagined point of origin. And yet, as narrative repeatedly retold, myth constantly redefines what it sets out to pin down. Shakespeare's reinscription of the classical mythology of love reveals how far eroticism is subject to history.
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