Conceptions of Love and Death in Early Modern Literature (2015)

As Michael Neill has argued, 'death' is not something that can be imagined once and for all, but an idea that has to be constantly re-imagined across cultures and through time; which is to say that, like most human experiences that we think of as 'natural', it is culturally defined (2). We might, of course, argue that same is true of and Philosophical, theological, medical and literary discourse all help to shape understandings of both love and in different places and different periods. This special issue, arising from a one day conference held at University of Leeds under auspices of Northern Renaissance Seminars, seeks to explore cultural constructions of and death in early modern period, and in particular how these topics inform representation and understanding of each other in early modern literature. Moreover, our contributors are concerned with ways in which images of love and provide opportunities to reflect upon broader religious, political and cultural concerns of period.As Neill's argument suggests, constructions of love and are not unchanging. However, they also do not merely appear spontaneously. Each of essays in this special issue engages not only with immediate contexts of texts under consideration, but also, to a greater or lesser extent, with earlier understandings and constructions, such as biblical argument and story, classical philosophy, epyllion, confession, complaint and Petrarchan tropes of love. Classical epic and lyric, admired and imitated by many early modern poets, offered myths which linked our two main topics in desire that leads to death. Paris's abduction of Helen in Iliad brought about, directly or indirectly, of great Greek and Trojan heroes; Aeneas's abandonment of Dido in Book IV of Virgil's Aeneid brings about her suicide; Ovid's Narcissus's rejection of leads to her fading away to only a voice and shows his own as a consequence of unfulfilled desire, albeit for himself. Such tales act not only as basis for retellings but offered early modern poets, playwrights and authors opportunities to use such well known tales for their own purposes. In Elizabethan erotic poetry such as Marlowe's Hero and Leander and Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, The potential of classical narrative was untapped to explore of sexual desire, limits of artistic convention, gender and power roles, and to negotiate for author privileged status of creator of a world, not only reflecting but informing real life, a synaesthetic reality, whose laws are exclusively in artist control of master (Sokolova 401).Two of our essays, by Sarah Carter and Will McKenzie, examine Shakespeare's longer poems in relation to these transformative powers and responses to love and desire in and through death. In McKenzie's essay on Shakespeare's A Lover's Complaint, desire is necessarily masochistic and feminine, and leads to murderous and suicidal urges in poem. literal and metaphorical conceit of Echo is foregrounded as McKenzie examines shiftfrom violent eroticism between women to their self-destructive tendencies towards end of poem. This poem, in McKenzie's view, reconstructs gender distinctions precisely at points where it seems to be tearing them apart. is at once feminine and the basis of a new mode of confession for sexual transgression. This confessional mode is at very centre of poem's representations of love and can lead to self-forgiveness and suicide. As McKenzie tells us from outset, the poem finds in heart of love itself. In contrast, Carter's essay - a classically-informed close-reading of Venus and Adonis - examines actual and metaphorical functions of and dying in Shakespeare's poem and argues that it is through its manipulation of Ovidian mythology that language of is used as an expression of love and physical desire. …