Venus as Muse

“The strength of the collection is its emphasis on historical continuity: Western culture, it seems, frequently drawing on Oriental models, has always had need of a love goddess. She has just taken different forms as social contexts have evolved down the last two millennia.” - Julian Preece, Swansea University, in: Modern Language Review 111.2 (2016), pp. 534-535

• ContentsIntroductionGÜNTER BLAMBERGERVenus as Muse. A Contradictory Thought-Image? 9SEBASTIAN GOTHVenus Anadyomene. The Birth of Art 15ELIZABETH ASMISVenus and the Passion for Renewal in Lucretius’s On the Natureof Things 41Visual & Performing ArtsJENNIFER SHAWThe Figure of Venus. Rhetoric of the Ideal from Cabanel toClaude Cahun 57JEANETTE KOHLIntra-Venus 73LiteratureSEBASTIAN GOTHVenus as Muse. Toward a Poetics of Lust 121RUDOLF DRUX“The Most Blessed Goddess” Venus as the ‘Ally’ of the Poet (in)Heinrich Heine 149TOM CONLEYVenus Backwards. From Rimbaud to Ronsard 163BARBARA VINKENNana: Venus a rebours. Paris of the Second Empire as the Returnof Rome and Babylon 173HANJO BERRESSEMThe Transit of Venus 199Film, Media, TheoryLAURENCE RICKELSVenus Barbata 221ELISABETH BRONFENCleopatra’s Venus 235COLIN GARDNERSamuel Beckett’s ‘Peephole’ Venus. Re-Sexualization,The Oral Mother, and the Masochist Contract in Eh Joe,Ghost Trio, and …but the clouds… 251PATRICIA MACCORMACKVenusian Ecosophy 265Contributors 281