The Rapes of Lucretia: A Myth and Its Transformations

by Ian Donaldson

A study of the story in art and certain important writers, FOLLOWED by a look at it in Ancient sources.

Genres: Literary Criticism

214 pages, Hardcover

First published October 28, 1982

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Stop talking about what rape victims 'should' or should not do. Honestly, the paragraph on Artemisia Gentileschi (I think her Lucretia painting shows plenty of violence, thank you very much)...and the most uninspired Clarissa criticism. Waste of time.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Donaldson takes the Roman story of the rape of Lucretia as told by Livy in book 1 of his History of Rome and follows its transformations.

Starting with the rape and suicide of Lucretia, he examines some of the visual representations in Renaissance art, and then goes on to explore the problematisation of Lucretia's act in Augustine whose Christianity takes a different view of suicide.

The second half of the book turns the myth on its head by following Brutus and the political half of the myth, tracking the way he also moves from heroic centre to something far more ambiguous.

Overall this is an interesting book but I found it slightly unsatisfying in the way it splits the myth into half: chaste, raped Lucretia and then heroic, Republican Brutus. I think Livy's archetypical telling links the two so that they are inextricably intertwined and so to divide them is to lessen the power of the story.

However I particularly found the discussions of Lucretia in art enlightening, and the perfect foundation for a more detailed assessment.

So an important book, but in some ways a light-weight one. Well worth reading, but it does need some follow-up.

[Alasdair Ekpenyong · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Leibniz, the founder of optimism, and a great poet as well as a profound philosopher, writes somewhere that in a temple at Memphis there was a great pyramid of globes placed one on top of the other. A priest, who was asked by a traveller what this pyramid of globes represented, replied that these were all the possible worlds and that the most perfect of all was at the summit; the traveller, who was curious to have a closer look at this most perfect of all possible worlds, climbed to the top of the pyramid, where the first thing he saw was Tarquin raping Lucretia." - Diderot to Sophie Volland, 20 October 1760

[l · Rating 2 out of 5]

Saw it cited in Suicide & the Body Politic in Imperial Russia. Kind of obvious tbh.

[Michael P. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun and interesting book with a chapter on Shakespeare's poem.