‘How Well He's Read,To Reason Against Reading’: Language,Eros and Education in Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost

This article explores the notion of eros and education by turning to erotic literature: specifically, Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost. In this early play, Shakespeare portrays a sophisticated Renaissance world in which the conventions of literary education overtly affirm and celebrate eros whilst covertly denying its relational and generative power. The courtiers of Navarre, whilst being experts in the ‘semantics’ of eros, all fail to respond when their own relationships and the world around them require of them a genuine erotic engagement. Shakespeare thus portrays a situation where eros, language and education are all divided, and suggests that a superficial appropriation of desire results in a concept of education which is overly learner‐centred and avoids relationality and a genuine engagement with the world. Only through this authentic engagement, the play suggests, do eros and education genuinely belong together.