Jane Kingsley-Smith: Cupid in Early Modern Literature and Culture

• Catherine Bates

This book considers the representation of Cupid in a great diversity of materials – prose, poetry, plays, masques, ballads, emblems, tapestries, paintings, jewellery, and so forth – across a historical range that extends from antiquity to the mid-seventeenth century. Although the book focuses on the years between Tottel and Davenant, it maintains this breadth of reference throughout. With frequent asides to Homer, Euripides, Seneca, Ovid, Dante, Petrarch, and many other writers and artists from classical and medieval times, the book’s remit is undoubtedly ambitious, but perhaps overly so.