The Body In The Renaissance Era

Renaissance authors tended to refer to love in a quite unnatural way. Women were the object of desire; they usually had to be conquered by men, and this conquest was carried out by means of a very special language, which has been largely shown in literature, and widely studied and analysed too. In this way, Petrarchan tradition is the greatest exponent in terms of literary work and Petrarchanlove is the most important label for this kind of speech; it was full of rhetoric language, metaphors, mythical allusions placed in platonic love: a love that is never fulfilled, remaining untouched. However, Shakespeare’s treatment of love is different, and more specifically, the description of the physical relationships in his poem ‘Venus and Adonis’ meant a huge jump from the tradition to this newperspective of the explicit desire for a male body by a female body.

First of all as it is possible to see in the text the most striking thing, which is the sexual necessity Venus experiences. In this passage it is possible to see how she directs the encounter, the way she is trying to seduce Adonis

'Torches are made to light, jewels to wear,
Dainties to taste, fresh beauty for the use,Herbs for their smell, and sappy plants to bear;
Things growing to themselves are growth's abuse:
Seeds spring from seeds, and beauty breedeth beauty;
Thou wast begot; to get it is thy duty. (166-168)

She is a deity, but a woman, showing impetuous sexual attraction, she is no longer the owner of her body, desire is the ruler. This new focus on women’s corporal reactions is veryimportant due to the innovation it means, as well as contrastive with the reaction of Adonis. He is not happy with her, see ‘Look how a bird lies tangled in a net, / So fastened in her arms Adonis lies’(lines 67-68), and this is important due to the absence of sexual desire by the masculine part of the poem. This reaction is strange and not even natural since Venus is the goddess of love, and she must beattractive to men. Although, as Heather Asals points out when quoting Cantelupe, “there is very little divinity and even less of mythology about Venus” (Asals 1973:31), hence, it is possible to assume now that this poem deals with a human character. In this way, it is possible to think of a body that lacks a common response to sexual insinuation, as the poem says in line 121 when Venus asks himafter having kissed him ‘'Art thou asham'd to kiss? (…)’. This is a completely new insight. The masculine body does not need a woman, but Venus, obviously, needs his body, she is desperate and thirsty as it is said in line 92 ‘Never did passenger in summer's heat / More thirst for drink than she for this good turn’.

There are different views on Venus’s desire for Adonis’s body. The commonestthiought may be related to sheer lust. In this way, the reader may think that she simply wishes to own Adonis for her own pleasure; although sometimes Venus is assumed to be the personification of love (Lindheim 1986: 193). Actually, in the beginning of the poem what may be perceived is just her attraction and the attempts she does to conquer Adonis, as well as, consequently, the reader can feelAdonis’s sense of oppression.

Over one arm the lusty courser's rein, 
Under her other was the tender boy, 
Who blush'd and pouted in a dull disdain, 
With leaden appetite, unapt to toy; 
She red and hot as coals of glowing fire, 
He red for shame, but frosty in desire. 

However, there is one point of view which does not attend to this general thinking of bodies’ attraction-rejection.Hamilton argues that Venus’s feelings are, in the first place, ruled by her corporal necessity, but the difference comes as the poem goes on, and finally her sexual desire becomes love (Hamilton 1961: 4). This new perspective is quite valuable due to the new light on this matter. It gives the poem a more philosophical meaning, at least a more transcendental significance through which the character...