Bird-Catching as a Love Allegory: A Comparison of Greco-Roman and Early Modern English Literature

Abstract:In the literature of early modern England, particularly Lyly, Shakespeare, and Spenser, love and sexual desire are commonly allegorised in terms of luring, trapping, and shooting birds. This paper investigates the classical origins of this symbolism, revealing how authors used Greek and Roman metaphors of love-as-fowling to inform their own works, with Cupid himself often imagined as a bird. It reconstructs technical and terminological aspects of fowling, arguing that we can only understand why bird-catching was used to express desire once we have answered fundamental questions of how, when, and by whom birds were traditionally caught.