Abstract

Venus reconfigures the Western view of love pioneered by Ovid, adapted by Petrarch, and perpetuated by Shakespeare and others. Parks appropriates this tradition to dismantle its gendered models of agency, which she shows influenced modern scientific thinking. If Venus is about a black woman whose venerean corpse is dissected by the white men who love her, it is also by a black woman who resurrects the venerable corpus of the dead white men she loves. Ultimately, Parks returns to premodern poetry because it allows for creative interventions precluded by modern modes of knowing.

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