SOURCE: "Troping Desire in Shakespeare's 'venus and Adonis'," in Forum for Modern Language Studies, Vol. XXXIII, No. 4, October, 1997, pp. 289-301.

In the following essay, Stanivukovic probes the rhetoric of desire in Venus and Adonis.

Venus and Adonis is the most rhetorical and erotic of Shakespeare's early works. Eros is the main subject of the poem's narrative and also the central topic of the rhetorical arguments in it. Hence, critics have focused on these two aspects of the poem, discussing the purpose and the tone of its rhetoric, and interpreting the representation of eros in the poem's narrative. A list of references documenting this point would be too long, and perhaps even unnecessary, because many interpretations arrive, more or less, at the same conclusion. Summarising this, Lucy Gent notices that "Rhetoric in [ . . . ] Venus and Adonis is usually thought of as remarkably plentiful, and very well done—but rather tedious...