‘깨져버린 가엾은 거울’: 루크리스의 슬픈 이야기와 자아

That Shakespeare, in writing The Rape of Lucrece, took great pains to produce the ‘grave labour’ points to the poem’s considerable art and rhetorical figure. More significant is that whereas Livy, Ovid and Chaucer assigned few words to Lucrece, Shakespeare's Lucrece was assigned a great number of lines as well as excellent rhetoric skill. This gives her an unprecedented opportunity that, when she becomes a victim of rape, she can both recount the details of her own experience and defend herself. Once she is raped, she feels isolated and gradually begins to lament extreme emotional distress and sorrow. Her tragic lament enables her to come to terms with her grief and thus come face to face with herself. Lucretius, the father of Lucrece refers to dead Lucrece as ‘poor broken glass’, in which he finds his own image broken, not Lucrece's. This represents the patriarchal perception that tries to deny women autonomy and subordinate women to men. Ironically, however, only by being broken is Lucrece able to get out of the grip of men, and with her poor tongue establish herself as an autonomous being. If visual images and mirror were reserved for men to identify male selfhood, oral tradition of crafting a tale constitutes female selfhood. Unlike Ovid’s Philomela, who had her tongue cut out by Tereus, Lucrece decides to appease her sorrow by lamenting the sad tale of her own. Finally, she takes her life in an attempt to prevent her honour from falling into disgrace. Thus, her songs and suicide contribute to her becoming a glass to be modeled after by women as well as being part of a history. KCI Citation Count: 0