Approaching Shakespeare's Conception Of Sexuality From Sexual Language In Love's Labour's Lost,Othello And The Winter's Tale

William Shakespeare shows a continuous interest in sexuality and implicitly evolves his conception of sexuality as his literary career proceeds.This thesis attempts to investigate this evolving course.Apart from his depiction of character,sexuality underlies Shakespeare's use of sexual language,including lusty puns,sexual images,lewd riddles and sexual innuendos.In this thesis,three plays-the early comedy Love's Labour's Lost,the middle tragedy Othello and the late romance The Winter's Tale-have been selected for the purpose of approaching Shakespeare's abiding and unique discernment of sexuality with affinities to sexual language and of Shakespeare's different attitudes towards sexuality from his early to late period.In Love's Labour's Lost,the image eye and its transformation are anatomized,from which derive that Shakespeare flaunts desire in this play.In Othello,Desdemona's hand,Desdemona's handkerchief and Othello's imaginative horn upon forehead are charged with Othello's sexual jealousy and cuckoldry anxiety,which reflect Shakespeare's anxiety of sexuality between men and women.In The Winter's Tale that features fewer sexual puns and images but with a superb energy,the dissolution of Leontes' jealousy and the image garden representing Hermione,Perdita and Pauline are explored,which reveal reason dominates Shakespeare's conception of sexuality.In the light of the above explorations,the thesis tentatively concludes that Shakespeare fashions and maps his conception of sexuality in the course of his career by projecting his different psychological personality structure onto the three plays.This psychological projection has a coincidence with Freud's individual tripartite psychological personality structure: the id,the ego and the super-ego.