rehabilitated. Indeed, it is now seen as a valuable
glimpse into Shakespeare’s early development as a
poet.
Traditional critical interpretations of Venus and
Adonis address Shakespeare’s use of classical myth to
depict Elizabethan thoughts about love, situate the
context of the poem in relation to Shakespeare’s efforts
to secure noble PATRONAGE, or compare Shakespeare’s
poem to others of the same genre and era. Although
modern scholars have not abandoned allegorical stud-
ies of Venus and Adonis—that is, its possible references
to Queen Elizabeth—or its comparison to Shake-
speare’s other works, recent criticism has emphasized
the Venice and Adonis’s highly stylistic verse and what it
reveals about Shakespeare’s culture during his forma-
tive years. Some recent studies have, for instance,
emphasized the importance of hunting in Venus and
Adonis in relation to the context of Elizabethan Eng-
land. Other studies have explored ALLEGORY outside the
political, concentrating primarily on the abundant bes-
tial imagery and allusions to numerous animals.
Though the narrative presents itself as a tragedy on the
surface, some recent criticism has examined the come-
dic overtones of the narrative. Feminist and gender
critics have also found rich subject matter within this
poem, especially in examining Venus’s aggressive pur-
suit of Adonis, who seems uninterested in pursuing an
affair with the beautiful goddess of love and more
interested in pursuing masculine activities within a
homosocial environment, and who preferred death to
sexual consummation. Contextually placed within the
Shakespeare canon in this manner, it provides an
important view of Shakespeare’s initial perspectives on
relations between the sexes.
See also OVID.
FURTHER READING
Bush, Douglas. Mythology and the Renaissance Tradition. New
York: Norton, 1963.
Duncan-Jones, Katherine. “Playing Fields or Killing Fields:
Shakespeare’s Poems and Sonnets.” Shakespeare Quarterly
54, no. 2 (2003): 127–141.
Kolin, Philip C. Venus and Adonis: Critical Essays. New York:
Garland, 1997.
James N. Ortego II
VERNACULAR Two senses of this term are rel-
evant to literary studies. First, vernacular generally
refers to a common manner of speaking and the natu-
ral and informal fi gures of speech that people use in
their local, everyday lives. In this sense, the term is
usually employed in direct contrast to formal, polysyl-
labic forms of expression, sometimes for comic effect.
The other sense of vernacular refers to differences
between languages and is best represented by compar-
ing Latin and other languages. When Latin began fad-
ing after the collapse of the Roman Empire, it grew into
new local languages: Italian, Catalan, Spanish, Portu-
guese, French, Provençal, and Romanian. From this,
the term vernacular broadened to include “any lan-
guage that is not Latin”—but it also has connotations
of folk and popular culture.
This last point is important because most vernacular
languages held little or no authority or prestige during
the early Middle Ages (from the fi fth through the 11th
centuries). Despite Latin being a “dead” language, it
continued to be the only one taught in schools and was
used as the offi cial international language of church,
state, law, and history throughout Europe. Occasion-
ally, a monarch or educational reformer might try to
encourage the use of a vernacular language. ALFRED THE
GREAT, for example, himself translated many Latin
works into Old English in the second half of the ninth
century. But Latin’s supreme authority as a written lan-
guage did not become questioned in a widespread way
until the 14th century, when a number of political and
intellectual changes, quickened by the upward social
mobility available to survivors of the BLACK DEATH,
caused people to assert their vernacular language at
Latin’s expense. One of the strongest allies in the rise of
vernacular languages was religious reform. The Protes-
tant Reformation in the early 1500s involved a mistrust
of a Bible that very few people (including, more and
more often, priests themselves) could read accurately.
See also CHAUCER, GEOFFREY.
FURTHER READING
Bassnett, Susan. Translation Studies. New York: Routledge,
2002.
Clanchy, Michael T. From Memory to Written Record: England
1066–1307. Oxford: Blackwell Press, 1993
Fred PorchedduVERNACULAR 449