Cupid in Early Modern Literature and Culture

✍ Scribed by Jane Kingsley-Smith

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 275
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Cupid became a popular figure in the literary and visual culture of post-Reformation England. He served to articulate and debate the new Protestant theory of desire, inspiring a dark version of love tragedy in which Cupid kills. But he was also implicated in other controversies, as the object of idolatrous, Catholic worship and as an adversary to female rule: Elizabeth I's encounters with Cupid were a crucial feature of her image-construction and changed subtly throughout her reign. Covering a wide variety of material such as paintings, emblems and jewellery, but focusing mainly on poetry and drama, including works by Sidney, Shakespeare, Marlowe and Spenser, Kingsley-Smith illuminates the Protestant struggle to categorise and control desire and the ways in which Cupid disrupted this process. An original perspective on early modern desire, the book will appeal to anyone interested in the literature, drama, gender politics and art history of the English Renaissance.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover......Page 1
Frontmatter......Page 2
Contents......Page 8
List of illustrations......Page 10
Acknowledgements......Page 11
Introduction......Page 12
1 - Cupid, art and idolatry......Page 35
The Cupid-idol: medieval to Renaissance......Page 37
Tottel's Miscellany and Cupid-worship......Page 43
Sidney and Cupid-art......Page 46
Condemning iconoclasm: the Arcadia and Cupid's Revenge......Page 55
Cupid and iconoclasm in The Faerie Queene......Page 61
Cupid and the art of Busirane......Page 65
2 - Cupid, death and tragedy......Page 71
Part one: love and death come closer together......Page 72
Here love dies: the putto and the skull......Page 73
Cupid and Death: `De Morte & Amore'......Page 75
The Cupidean plague-angel......Page 82
Part two: Cupidean tragedy......Page 85
3 - Cupid, chastity and rebellious women......Page 105
Producing female desire: Cupid and Mary Stuart......Page 107
Succumbing to Cupid......Page 114
Threatening female chastity: Cupid and Elizabeth I......Page 116
Displacing male desire: Cupid and Lady Mary Wroth......Page 132
4 - Cupid and the boy -- the pleasure and pain of boy-love......Page 144
Cupid as beautiful boy......Page 146
Desiring Cupid in Italian Renaissance art: Pontormo, Bronzino, Caravaggio......Page 147
Dido, Queen of Carthage and Cupid as boy actor......Page 153
Cupid and effeminacy: Middleton's The Nice Valour......Page 157
Cupid, sodomy and castration: Soliman and Perseda and Cupid's Whirligig......Page 160
The pleasures of infantilism: Sidney vs. Greville......Page 164
Cupid and maternal nurturance on the early modern stage......Page 168
Cupid and Psyche: Apuleius, Fulgentius and Boccaccio......Page 174
Reading Adlington's Cupid......Page 177
Heywood's Love's Mistress......Page 181
Cupid in the Caroline masque: Love's Triumph Through Callipolis and The Temple of Love......Page 188
Conclusion: Cupid in the English Civil Wars......Page 194
Notes......Page 197
Bibliography......Page 242
Index......Page 271