How clear is the distinction between love and lust in Renaissance literature?

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Vicky Cirillo                          Renaissance literature – Essay two                                  Prof. Hammond

‘Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,

But lust’s effect is tempest after sun;

Love’s gentle spring doth always fresh remain,

Lust’s winter comes ere summer half be done;

    Love surfeits not, lust like a glutton dies;

    Love is all truth, lust full of forged lies.’    (Venus and Adonis)

How clear is the distinction between love and lust in Renaissance literature?

The distinction between love and lust is not necessarily clear in certain aspects of Renaissance literature.  In ‘The Rape of Lucrece’, we are presented with an obvious distinction between the chaste Lucrece and her example of married love, and Tarquin’s violent expression of lust.  However, in ‘Venus and Adonis’, sexual role are reversed and Venus becomes the aggressor associated with lust and the distinction as to what constitutes love or lust becomes less clear in the realms of sexual love.  It seems easy for us to associate love and sexual love together in our less inhibited society, but in the Renaissance period, the association was not there in the same way.  The distinction between love and lust is also based upon the more complex and less clear distinctions between other related ideas.  It is the influence of these individual ideas that bring about the definitions of the concepts of love and lust, and so help us to identify the distinction between them.  Although the quote in the title of this question, taken from Venus and Adonis, seems to have no trouble in drawing up a clear distinction, a closer look at this text and ‘The Rape of Lucrece’ seems to create more of a blur in the distinction.

In ‘Venus and Adonis’ we can see many conflicting ideas and images relating to certain issues, for example, violence and tenderness, and the contrasts that these conflicting images provoke give us an insight into the distinction made between love and lust in Renaissance literature.  Venus is the Goddess of love, a classical figure relating to love in all its forms, including that of sexual desire and lust. In looking at the placing of the emphasis in Shakespeare’s telling of this classical tale, and the way in which he portrays the characters and manipulates what they stand for, we can perhaps gauge an insight as to the distinction made between love and lust in literature of this period.   Looking at Shakespeare’s alterations in his adaptation of Ovid, we can see the main thematic concerns become clear.  In his portrayal of Venus, we can see Shakespeare’s creation of a sexual conflict that is not present in the Metamorphoses.  Shakespeare’s Venus becomes more aggressively lustful, much of the loving or romantic language she uses is tainted by an aggressively lustful addition, for example, as she ‘murders with a kiss’ the words Adonis was about to speak.  The distinction between love and lust is blurred in the character of Venus, with her mingling of passion, desire and love.              

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Shakespeare’s representation of Venus and Adonis sets them in absolute opposition to one another, and highlights a whole set of conflicts inherent in their relationship.  He reverses their sexual roles so that Venus takes on a traditionally masculine role, that of the ‘bold-fac’d suitor’, while Adonis seems to take on qualities which appear to be more feminine, he is the shy, reluctant beauty, as Venus claims, he is ‘more lovely than a man’, emphasising his disassociation with a more masculine appearance.

 In ‘The Rape of Lucrece’, the distinction between love and lust is not only a physical ...

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