Full Description
This volume deals with the enduring presence of one of Western culture's most fascinating and influential figures in ancient, modern, and postmodern art and literature: Venus/Aphrodite, the goddess of love, beauty, and sexuality. The collection, which is the first of its kind, seeks to explore Venus's significance as a figure of beauty and creativity across cultures and disciplines, engaging a range of media, theoretical approaches, and cultural perspectives. Thirteen international scholars—including Elisabeth Bronfen, Tom Conley, Laurence Rickels, and Barbara Vinken—illuminate Venus's lasting value as a multifaceted figure of the creative in Western culture, from Lucretius to Michel Serres.
Contents
Contents
Introduction
GÜNTER BLAMBERGER
Venus as Muse. A Contradictory Thought-Image? 9
SEBASTIAN GOTH
Venus Anadyomene. The Birth of Art 15
ELIZABETH ASMIS
Venus and the Passion for Renewal in Lucretius's On the Nature
of Things 41
Visual & Performing Arts
JENNIFER SHAW
The Figure of Venus. Rhetoric of the Ideal from Cabanel to
Claude Cahun 57
JEANETTE KOHL
Intra-Venus 73
Literature
SEBASTIAN GOTH
Venus as Muse. Toward a Poetics of Lust 121
RUDOLF DRUX
"The Most Blessed Goddess" Venus as the 'Ally' of the Poet (in)
Heinrich Heine 149
TOM CONLEY
Venus Backwards. From Rimbaud to Ronsard 163
BARBARA VINKEN
Nana: Venus a rebours. Paris of the Second Empire as the Return
of Rome and Babylon 173
HANJO BERRESSEM
The Transit of Venus 199
Film, Media, Theory
LAURENCE RICKELS
Venus Barbata 221
ELISABETH BRONFEN
Cleopatra's Venus 235
COLIN GARDNER
Samuel Beckett's 'Peephole' Venus. Re-Sexualization,
The Oral Mother, and the Masochist Contract in Eh Joe,
Ghost Trio, and ...but the clouds... 251
PATRICIA MACCORMACK
Venusian Ecosophy 265
Contributors 281
