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영어

“The World of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 20.” Studies in English Language & Literature 39.2 (2013): 81-100. Interpreters of Shakespeare’s sonnet 20 can be divided into two groups. The interpreters in one group find sexual attraction revealed toward the friend(‘thou’) but those in the other group find that such an attraction is denied. Such conflicting views are caused by the ambiguities and sexual puns of sonnet 20. Double entendres that words such as ‘passion’, ‘nothing’, and ‘prick’ carry make both homosexual readings and anti-homosexual readings possible. The fact that male and female were not typically divided into two discrete sexes with distinct reproductive parts and processes in Shakespeare’s days also helps readers enjoy such conflicting readings. This paper attempts to prove that it is the world of Shakespeare’s sonnet 20 where such conflicting readings are possible because sonnet 20 reflects the contradictions and ambiguities in social, cultural and intellectual situations of his times when Judeo-Christian morals against homosexuality and ancient Greek and Roman cultures for homosexuality coexisted and pederastic sexual relationships on Greek model were not rare.