"The perplexity of desire: Representation and poetic thinking in Shakespeare's ""Venus and Adonis"" and ""Love's Labor's Lost"""

While examining and challenging the current thought that desire only exists in the alienated movement between anticipation and insufficiency, this study arranges itself around three or four sentences used in discussions about desire: the proposition, a statement judged either true or false; the taboo or prohibition, a denial that makes the forbidden more enticing; and the promise, a sentence that often requires an excuse. These sentences keep open grammatical and rhetorical possibilities for the expression of our desires (the desire to know, the desire for prohibited passions, and the desire for a reliable love), and they make it possible to work between Shakespeare's texts and interpretive discussions. Each chapter focuses upon one sentence and one Shakespeare work: the proposition in Sonnet 14 (and in the Copernican hypothesis), the taboo or prohibition in Venus and Adonis, and the promise (as well as the excuse) in Love's Labor's Lost.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2011

Author dc:creator

• Murphy, Patrick Martin

Contributors dc:contributor

• Wheeler, Richard P.

• Philosophy
• Literature, English

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 1989 Murphy, Patrick Martin

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

AAI8924908
(UMI)AAI8924908

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/20456