Raison d’état , Religion, and the Body in The Rape of Lucrece
Feisal G. Mohamed
Religions · 2019
doi:10.3390/rel10070426 (opens in a new tab)
We email you when a new notice or a question about this paper appears.
Abstract
With an emphasis on the religious figuration of its heroine’s chaste body, the present essay explores the political dynamics of <i>The Rape of Lucrece</i>. The poem draws on Roman religion and Christianity: Lucrece is an emblem of purity, with echoes of the <i>flaminica</i> or Vestal virgins, and her spotlessness anticipates Christ’s. Seeing these qualities allows us to engage the poem’s gender dynamics and its politics, with both of these being centered on issues of property. While <i>The Rape of Lucrece</i> has been enlisted as an artifact of late Elizabethan republican culture, its depiction of the expulsion of the Tarquins need not lead us to that conclusion. It is nonetheless a product of the political anxieties of Elizabeth’s final years.
Abstract licence: CC BY
Reads
Read by people on this page
None yet.
Checked or read by AI through naulon
None yet.
A person counts once a day per paper. We keep no cookie and no address: a reader is a hash that changes every day. Any month under five reads shows no number.
Are you an author?
Is this your paper?
Claim it to add your note and be paid when agents cite it. Free.