ScholarWorks@숙명여자대학교

초록

Since Titus Livy had rendered the story of Lucrece in his The History of Rome, many writers, including Ovid, Augustin, and Chaucer, retold the story with their own emphasis and interpretations. Among these, Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece is unique in that the poet provides lengthy and often considered an extravagant thinking process with its two protagonists, Tarquin and Lucrece. In fact, the significant part of the poem is constructed with Tarquin’s interior monologue on his struggle against his carnal desire for the chaste woman and, after his disappearance, Lucrece’s laments and agonies which ultimately lead to her final decision to kill herself. The rest is merely a description of events, following Livy’s History. In order to understand the meaning of the poem, therefore, it is crucial to apprehend why Shakespeare spends so much effort and space on revealing the minds of the two characters. In this paper I would examine the two protagonists, particularly the significances of their attitudes toward the dilemma each has to confront and argue that their minds and their ways of thinking are what make the poem a great human tragedy. I would also contend that whereas Tarquin, a prototype of villain-hero, is a victim of his own desire, Lucrece is neither an emblem of moral victory as some critics suggest nor a victim of socio-political setting of the work. Shakespeare manifests a tragedy that human beings who strive for desire and fame cannot escape in his longest poetic work “with some graver labor.”

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