Abstract
[...]Cupid came to symbolize the attraction and danger of idolatry (and hence Catholicism) while at the same time providing poets like Sidney and Spenser an avenue for testing the limits (and limitations) of iconoclasm. [...]Kingsley-Smith argues that "the kinds of desire that Cupid embodied were fundamentally opposed to the 'erotic politics' of English Protestantism" (2). [...]when she argues that representations of Cupid in the period tend to resist the Protestant ideal of desire, it is at times leftambiguous whether she intends that such representations are more in keeping with a Catholic account of desire, or with a pagan desire that disrupts every aspect of Christian heteronormativity.