Myth and Mythology in English Literature. Shakespeare's Gender Representation and Role-Reversal in "Venus and Adonis"

Daniel Laux

• Publisher: GRIN Verlag
• Year: 2013
• Edition: 0
• eBook ISBN:
  9783656478218
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

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.