- cid
- bafkreig3pwal22vgymz3lb724aajqcpp3t3y2veunui3jnee55lvnzh4uu
- content_type
- image/jpeg
- filename
- 06_poems_pericles_facsimiles_1905_oxford_page_0149.jpg
- height
- 2400
- key
- pdf-page-1769752375861-3jgr1lsd7rg
- ocr_model
- mistral-ocr-latest
- page_number
- 149
- size
- 512738
- text
- 10
LUCRECE
St. Augustine.
Mediæval versions.
Sisteenth-century developments.
Among early Christian authors St. Augustine retold the legend in his *Civitas Dei* (Bk. i, ch. 16–19). He commented with some independence on the ethical significance of Lucrece’s self-slaughter, which he deemed unjustified by the circumstances of the case.
The tale found a place in the most widely-read storybook of the Middle Ages, the *Gesta Romanorum*, and by the fourteenth century it had become a stock topic among poets and novelists. Of the great authors of the Italian Renaissance Boccaccio was the earliest to utilize it. He narrated it in his Latin prose treatise *De Claris Mulieribus*. It was doubtless Boccaccio’s example that first recommended it to imaginative writers in England. Chaucer and Gower both turned the story into English verse, Chaucer in his *Legend of Good Women* (§ 5, ll. 1680–885) and Gower in his *Confessio Amantis* (Bk. vii. 4754–5130). Both Chaucer and Gower closely followed Ovid, but derived a few touches from Livy. Half a century later Lydgate noticed the legend in his *Fall of Princes* (Bk. iii, ch. 5). When the Middle Ages closed, Lucrece was a recognized heroine of English poetry.
The sixteenth century saw a further increase in the popularity of the topic, both in England and on the continent of Europe. It was a favourite theme in Italy both for Latin and Italian epigrams and sonnets. The Italian prose-writer, Bandello, dealt with it in his collection of novels, which, first appearing in 1554, at once attained a classical repute. Bandello’s fiction was quickly translated into French. The revived drama of the Renaissance found in Lucrece’s fate a fit subject for tragedy, and plays in which the Roman matron is the heroine were penned, not in France alone, but, more
Dr. Wilhelm Ewig has treated of the sources with much learning, but he has not exhausted the interesting topic.
- text_extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T06:13:51.387Z
- text_extracted_by
- ocr-service
- text_has_content
- true
- text_images_count
- 0
- text_source
- ocr
- uploaded
- true
- width
- 1750