nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
i was thumbing through an anthology of Shakespeare's poems and came across something in the introduction about his poem Venus and Adonis (which in turn is derived from a book by Ovid) that i once knew but had forgotten.
Much of the story of Venus and Adonis is taken up with a long tale related by Venus herself. When Adonis tells her he is about to leave to hunt the boar, she tells him a long story about Atalanta and Hippomenes to delay him from going on his hunt. It is a tale about delay but also about sexual passion, since Atalanta has received a prophecy that when she marries she will be doomed and indeed she and Hippomenes are duly turned into lions upon marrying.
The presence of two narrators (alternatively Venus and Orpheus, the narrator of Ovid's book Metamorphoses) enables Ovid to bend and confuse readers' preconceptions about gender. Atlanta is a boyish girl. And when Ovid describes Orpheus, the lover of boys, describing Venus (in love with a girlish boy) describing Atalanta as she runs from Hippomenes, I can see how this can confuse our yute and send them on a dangerous path:
Her count'nance and her grace
was such as in a boy might well be called a wench's face,
and in a wench be called a boy's.
And then when Hippomenes meets Atalanta:
He saw her face and body bare, (for why the Lady then
Did strip to her naked skin) the which was like to mine,
Or rather (if that thou wert made a woman) like to thine:
He was amazed.
Is Atalanta desirable because she is like a boy, or because she is a girl, or both? Is Adonis lovely as a girl? And to what extent is Orpheus, who has loved women but now loves boys, present in these lines?
Fortunately our yute no longer are interested in old fuddy duddies like Ovid and Shakespeare. Otherwise they'd really be confused!
Much of the story of Venus and Adonis is taken up with a long tale related by Venus herself. When Adonis tells her he is about to leave to hunt the boar, she tells him a long story about Atalanta and Hippomenes to delay him from going on his hunt. It is a tale about delay but also about sexual passion, since Atalanta has received a prophecy that when she marries she will be doomed and indeed she and Hippomenes are duly turned into lions upon marrying.
The presence of two narrators (alternatively Venus and Orpheus, the narrator of Ovid's book Metamorphoses) enables Ovid to bend and confuse readers' preconceptions about gender. Atlanta is a boyish girl. And when Ovid describes Orpheus, the lover of boys, describing Venus (in love with a girlish boy) describing Atalanta as she runs from Hippomenes, I can see how this can confuse our yute and send them on a dangerous path:
Her count'nance and her grace
was such as in a boy might well be called a wench's face,
and in a wench be called a boy's.
And then when Hippomenes meets Atalanta:
He saw her face and body bare, (for why the Lady then
Did strip to her naked skin) the which was like to mine,
Or rather (if that thou wert made a woman) like to thine:
He was amazed.
Is Atalanta desirable because she is like a boy, or because she is a girl, or both? Is Adonis lovely as a girl? And to what extent is Orpheus, who has loved women but now loves boys, present in these lines?
Fortunately our yute no longer are interested in old fuddy duddies like Ovid and Shakespeare. Otherwise they'd really be confused!
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