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- lO LUCRECE
St. Augus-
tine.
Mediaeval
versions.
Sixteenth-
century de
velopmenrs.
Among early Christian authors St. Augustine retold
the legend in his Civitas Dei (Bk. i, ch. id-19). He com-
mented 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 story-
book of the Middle Ages, the Gesta 1{omanorum^ and by the
fourteenth century it had become a stock topic among poets
and novelists. O^ 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
($ y, 11. i<J8o-88y) and Gower in his Confessio Amantis (Bk. vii.
475'4-f 1 3 o)' 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. j-).
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 iff 4, 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.
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