In the course of the 1590’s, the golden age of English Renaissance poetry, Shakespeare composed some of his best but less studied output : three narrative poems - “Venus and Adonis”, “The Rape of Lucrece,” and “A Lover’s Complaint,” a pastoral poem published with the Sonnets but almost never anthologized or collected with them. These poems, written partly under the constraints of the closure of the theatres at the time, constitute some of Shakespeare’s most fascinating work. The plot of all three has to do wit the vicissitudes in love of women characters. We will read these poems from a rhetorical - psychoanalytical perspective, paying close attention to their form and enquring what more they can teach us about enigmas pertaining to femininity, Eros and poetic language

Requirements: active participation, in class presentation, term  paper