SOURCE: “Lucrèce, Junie, and Clélie: Burdens of Female Exemplarity,” in Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History, Vol. 17, 1990, pp. 515-23.

[In the following essay, Gaines compares Scudéry's rendering of violated feminine honor in Clélie with other contemporary French revisions of Livy's story of the rape of Lucretia. The critic suggests that by emphasizing the feelings and inner life of women, rather than the actions and honor of men, Scudéry grants women a greater power to shape both their own lives and history, and she helps clear the path for the modern psychological novel.]

Of all the Greco-Roman heroines that the French Renaissance placed beside, and often before, the pious female saints of the Middle Ages, none had assumed more prominence by mid-seventeenth century than Lucretia, the celebrated victim of Sextus Tarquinius. Other exemplary women, such as Portia or Sophonisba, may have known how to follow Senecan precepts and lay down their lives for a moral cause, but none had her virtue so brutally ravished or countered evil in such a politically far-reaching way. Small wonder that La Bruyère, listing the Classical names in vogue among the nobility, includes Lucrèce as one of only two feminine entries (“Des Grands,” 255). Livy's history consecrated her memory by making her rape the powerful justification which Lucius Junius Brutus used to prod his countrymen into overthrowing the sinful monarchy of the Tarquins and thus founding antiquity's best-known republic (I, 58 and 59).

It was Pierre Du Ryer, an early rival of Mairet, Rotrou, and Corneille, who undertook to translate Lucretia's ordeal onto the French stage at precisely the moment when absolute monarchy was in its ascendancy at Paris.¹ Du Ryer's Lucrece was at the time of its composition, probably early in 1636, a theatrical milestone, for it marked the author's full-fledged transition from the baroque tragicomedies of his youth to the genre of regular tragedy and to the Greco-Roman historical themes pioneered by Daniel Guérin de Bouscal and Georges de Scudéry a few months previously.²

It is important to recognize that Du Ryer's dramatization makes fundamental changes in the events as recounted by Livy. Of course, the basic framework remains: at an orgy given by Sextus Tarquinius, Collatinus boasts so boldly of his wife's combination of beauty and virtue that his royal cousin insists on a visit to his estate to see for himself, whereupon he promptly develops an ungovernable lust; returning to the house under a false pretext, Sextus attempts to seduce Lucretia, and failing that, forces himself upon her; disgusted at her defilement, Lucretia postpones her suicide long enough to extract a promise of vengeance from her family and friends. The most glaring of Du Ryer's innovations involves the character of Brutus, who was originally an accidental witness to Lucretia's tale. In Livy, Brutus had adopted an “antic disposition” as a disguise, in order to protect his anti-Tarquinian sentiments from the ruler's purges (I, 56). He only drops the veil of stupidity upon hearing of Lucretia's abuse, thereby astounding the other Romans. Instead of playing the fool, Du Ryer's Brute appears from the beginning as a lucid, well-known censor of morals, who offers Stoical advice to Collatin and even to the rakish prince. Indeed, by the end of the first visit to Collatia, he believes he has succeeded at least momentarily in dampening the bounder's desires.

From the outset, the principle of a high-minded, democratic morality as opposed to self-indulgent royal decadence is established in Du Ryer's play. The tyrannical autocracy of kings increases as they place themselves above the moral standards accepted by their communities. Even the naive Collatin is to some extent subsumed into this ethos, for he insists that his hommage to his spouse's unparalleled virtue is a kind of civic duty or privilege. The same tone persists in Lucrèce's first appearance on stage, where she veritably pushes her husband back toward the battle lines of Ardea, refusing Sextus's offer of a luxurious furlough, and declaring that “L'homme est fait pour la gloire et non pas pour les femmes” (v. 632).³

By this time, young Tarquin's passion, whipped into a perverse frenzy, has taken on distinctly political dimensions. He discloses that it is no longer Lucrèce's physical perfection that attracts him, but the prospect of destroying the moralistic pretentions of underlings like Collatin, Brute, and Lucrèce herself. Tyranny is thus vested with the same battle cry of “the prince's will,” which Richelieu's propagandists were using to strike down any notions of constitutional or limited kingship. In a ploy more elaborate than anything in earlier versions of the story, including Shakespeare's, Du Ryer's Tarquin sends an intriguing slave named Libane to lay the groundwork for his planned seduction by accusing Collatin of whoring.⁴

Yet, Libane's unctuous lies are no match for Lucrèce's righteousness. Though she does not believe a word of the accusations and pokes holes in the slave's testimony, she anchors her moral inflexibility on the startling position that her husband's conduct, good or bad, really has no impact upon her as long as she behaves so flawlessly as to deserve complete loyalty: “En ce poinct seulement je puis me satisfaire, / Qu'au moins mes actions l'obligent au contraire” (v. 763-4)! In the face of such fortitude, Tarquin's offers of wealth and political power quickly crumble, and he is obliged to fabricate an embarrassingly flimsy story about a wager to test her resolve.

The spectre of tyranny as a form of moral villainy is so firmly established that even Lucrèce's serving-women acknowledge Sextus to be “a crowned serpent,” forcing him to the ultimate recourse of brute force. Unlike Shakespeare's wilting protagonist, Du Ryer's Lucrèce never yields, even when Sextus threatens to defame her by spreading the story that he caught her en flagrant délit with Libane. She vociferously chases the rapist off stage with the same dagger that he had held at her throat, taunting him sarcastically, “Usurpateur des biens que l'honneur te refuse, / Ferme avec ce poignard la bouche qui t'accuse” (v. 1215-16). In her extended reflections on what to do next, she explicitly mentions the impossibility of obtaining justice from Tarquinius Superbus's absolute monarchy. Eschewing any hope of supernatural help in a universe where Heaven is silent and Hell is on the side of the kings, she herself decides to make her rape a public issue that will bring down not only her immediate aggressor, but also his entire dynasty and the form of government they represent.

Lucrèce's pre-suicidal speech in the fifth act carefully spells out all the motivations and consequences of her sacrifice: “Perdez pour vous sauver un Tyran redoutable, / Et rendez au pays mon malheur profitable” (v. 1375-76). She needs no male to draw the conclusions or set the deed in context, but only to drive home the sword of retribution. Whereas the historical Lucretia was moved mainly by familial notions of honor, the profoundly civic nature of the bond forged between her avengers becomes abundantly clear when the essentially disinterested Brute takes the lead in formulating the new Roman ideology after Lucrèce's death and in organizing the opposition to absolutism. Collatin and her aged father threaten to collapse into maudlin regrets or fruitless cults of guilt, were it not for the philosophical Brute's emphasis on sovereignty, beginning with control of the self. Du Ryer's transfer of militancy from the female victim to the male moralist is in keeping with the essence of Livy's history, for most schoolboys would know that early in Rome's struggle for independence Collatinus was exiled from the city because he was a blood relation of the emigré monarchs, and he thus never took a personal stake in Lucretia's revenge (I, 59).

But lest one think that the dying Lucrèce diminishes female exemplarity by placing its realization in the hands of males, Du Ryer presents a different outcome in Scevole, his 1647 sequel to Lucrece.⁵ It was also common knowledge that Brutus did not live to secure Rome against the Tarquins, since he died in a battle midway through the campaign against the Tuscans, leaving final victory to other heroes such as Horatius Cocles, Publius Valerius, and Caius Mucius, who earned the cognomen Scaevola, or left-handed, when he voluntarily burned off his right hand as he was about to be tortured by Lars Porsenna, the ally of Tarquinius Superbus. But the Parisian playwright embellishes the historical accounts of the period and creates a worthy female successor for Lucrèce by creating as Scévole's love interest a totally novel character, Junie, daughter to Brutus. This intrepid figure is no mere witness to masculine glory.

As Du Ryer's play begins, the Tuscan troops are being stopped at the Sublician Bridge by the bravery of Horatius. After hearing the news, Porsenne orders the interrogation of a female prisoner, but Junie's beauty bedazzles her captors as much as her patriotism astounds them. Her first words, citing the danger to any woman's honor in the proximity of a Tarquin, implicitly link her fate to that of Lucrèce.⁶ Much to Tarquin's chagrin, Porsenne offers her the freedom of the camp. A short while later, she learns that her lover Scévole has appeared in Porsenne's camp in the armor of the enemy, and she is ready to banish him for abandoning Rome.⁷ However, he reveals he has used this disguise to penetrate the Tuscan defenses and plans to assassinate the neighbor king, who is Tarquin's only hope for restoration. Though Junie can only wish for Rome's safety, her admiration for Porsenne and her personal thirst for glory lead her to delay the plot and to take a hand in the action herself. Invoking the doctrine of générosité, she insists that Scévole first give her the chance to purchase security for Rome by marrying either Porsenne or his tender-hearted son Arons: “Laisse donc devant toy combattre ma parole / Contre un Roy si puissant, pour Rome, pour Scevole” (v. 597-8). Reluctantly, Scévole accedes to her demands. Both Etruscan princes are more than eager to wed her, but Porsenne nevertheless refuses adamantly to abandon the raison d'état that dictates his support for fellow absolute monarchs, no matter how vice-ridden they may be.⁸ Only when she has failed in her attempt at self-sacrifice does Junie consent to Scévole's secret initiative, crowning it with her promises of esteem and love: “Je t'ayme et je te voy d'un oeil presque envieux / Tenter pour le pays un peril glorieux” (v. 1015-16). Even when Scévole is thwarted and taken prisoner, she continues to villify old Tarquin and to confront the more sympathetic Porsenne in the most strident terms.⁹ When Arons, torn between his firm friendship for Scévole, his indignation at the attempted murder, and his self-interest as a lover, attempts to seek consolation from Junie, she uses her sense of moral command to persuade him to transcend his personal griefs and to save Scévole from torture.¹⁰ Following her lover's lead, she declares she is willing to give all for Rome: “Et moy pour encherir par dessus ses efforts / Je verray mettre en cendre et ma main et mon corps” (v. 1529-30). Finally, it is as much in admiration for Junie's martial spirit as for Scévole's cold-blooded immolation of his arm that Porsenne turns away from royal absolutism and, forsaking the vice-ridden Tarquins, adopts a new model of the ideal monarch as a supreme judge, subject to the sovereignty of moral law.

Lucrèce and Junie combine to form a feminist twosome of Amazonian proportions, ever prepared to shed their claim to sentimental well-being and fulfillment in favor of a transcendent common good. Though this seems a natural course for Lucrèce, who had only to choose between a coxcomb like Collatin and an animal like Sextus, the price of political commitment is far more obvious in the case of Junie, who gives up a throne and the worshipping love of Arons, a suitor straight out of the subservient tradition of the chambre bleue. In Du Ryer's theatre, it sometimes seems that heroines are doomed to a kind of self-mutilation no less chilling than that of Scévole. But by the middle of the grand siècle circumstances evolved that would permit a reappraisal of female exemplarity. The constitutionalist fervor of Du Ryer's tragedies would be quenched, like so many other bourgeois illusions, in the failure of the Fronde revolts. But while this strategic defeat proved decisive in the case of limited monarchy, the Fronde if anything fed the myths of female exemplarity through the adventurous actions of the Grande Mademoiselle and the women of the Condé clan. It was left to Madeleine de Scudéry, former habituée of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, to shoulder the perhaps unlikely role of renewer of exemplary Roman womanhood in her vast 1661-64 romance, Clélie.¹¹

Well before Madeleine undertook her novel, the names of Lucretia and Clelia had existed side by side in her imagination. Clelia was one of the relatively few women besides Lucretia who played a noteworthy part in Rome's struggle for freedom. She belonged to a group of virgins delivered over to Porsenna as hostages following the cessation of hostilities between the Roman and Tuscan troops. Fearing for her virtue among a camp full of unruly warriors, she led the girls in a daring escape across the Tiber, only to be sent back by Rome's scrupulous leaders. When she was brought before Porsenna, she explained her motives is such an open and patriotic manner that the king was moved to free her, along with many of the other hostages, and to give her the special gift of a fine horse, which prompted the Romans to erect an unusual equestrian statue in her honor. In Les Femmes illustres, a 1644 collection of mostly fictional speeches made by great women in history, which is usually attributed to Georges but probably containing some work by his sister, both Lucretia and Clelia are featured in prominent “harangues.”¹² Moreover, the proximity between Livy's Clelia (II, 13) and Du Ryer's Junie was bound to attract her attention: both impressed Porsenna despite their status as captives in the enemy's camp, and both were outspoken in their insistence on moral purity. If any Roman lady seemed ideally suited to incarnate the spirit of préciosité, it was surely the eloquent, but nearly untouchable Clelia. Her position as the novel's protagonist could only be enhanced by adding the sentimental dilemma faced by Du Ryer's Junie, especially when dealing with the tender love of Arons. Scudéry's Aronce, as lover of Clélie, thus incorporates many features of Du Ryer's innovative figure, in contrast to the historical Aruns, who appears only in a single pitiful detail subsequent to the deliverance of Rome, as the otherwise undescribed youth perishes in an ill-advised campaign his father sent out against the Aricians and Cumaeans in order to save face.¹³

By the end of the first of fifteen books comprising the Clélie, Aronce has in effect triumphed over his Roman and Carthaginian rivals for the affections of his sweetheart. Not content to have saved the life of the young lady and her parents, who are all exiles from Tarquin's tyranny at Rome, he strives during the pastoral interlude at Capua to fulfill all the conditions of proper love set down by Clélie and codified in the famous “Carte du Pays de Tendre.” Clélie realizes that he has deserved her reciprocal devotion through his progress on the triple paths of esteem, gratitude, and inclination, and is prepared to marry him, when a tumultuous earthquake on the banks of the river Vulternus disrupts the festivities and throws her into the control of the Roman Horace, who continues to try alternately to persuade and to intimidate her through most of the rest of the novel. The following fourteen books do little to alter Clélie's determination to marry Aronce or to marry no one. In this static situation, the central plot is moved forward mainly through obstacles placed in the way by the couple's parents, who want their children to marry with countrymen, or by Tarquin and his iniquitous mate Tullie.

The sentimental stasis of the frame tale is however relieved and set in perspective by the inserted tales that take up a major part of each book, and it is here that a firm link with Lucretia is first established. In the fourth book, Herminius relates to Aronce the tale of Lucius Junius Brutus, which contains some of the most masterful imaginative strokes of the novelist. Far from being the ideal, but sentimentally sterile creature of previous versions, Scudéry's Lucrèce has an amorous past, and the man in that past is Brutus. Sorely afflicted by the same idiotic disguise that guarantees his survival, Brutus is cut off from the world of sexual emotions until chance permits him to come into contact with Lucrèce at his aunt's rural estate. Unlike most members of patrician society, Lucrèce and her friends stifle their initial aversion to Brutus and through a kind of tolerant pity allow him to accompany them in their diversions. Though in his previous, short-lived marriage, Brutus was “forced to an insupportable reservedness, even in those hours wherein all others have the greatest freedom” (180),¹⁴ he now experiences new emotions. Turning to voyeurism, he spies on Lucrèce at night through a hole in the bedroom wall: “He discovered a thousand new perfections … He fixed all his observation upon her with such a steadfast view, that he had not the power to close his eyes all the night after. This pleasing Idea, though full of delightful charms, troubled his rest, insinuating a kind of commotion into his heart, betwixt grief and joy, which raised in him a thousand different imaginations.” (185) Though he can find no more hope in his love than in his quest to deliver Rome from tyranny, he comes to see Lucrèce's role as providentially linked to that of the city and to identify a victory in love with a political triumph. This “supernatural inspiration” (189) leads him to begin revealing his true nature to his closest relatives, and eventually to Lucrèce herself. Taking advantage of a sentimental game involving scrambled words on a clay tablet, he discloses to her that he has wit enough to solve the conundrum that baffled her other princely suitors, and he even makes an avowal of his own emotions with a counter-riddle that Lucrèce alone can unravel:

Permit my love, thou with all beauty graced,
And thou shalt find some love shall ever last.

Smitten with curiosity, Lucrèce manages to arrange a tête-à-tête in a sheltered bower, where she finds out the whole truth about Brutus. Despite the fact that she is powerfully drawn to Brutus because of his greatness of spirit and his ingenious expressions of love, Lucrèce continually tries to dissuade him from pursuing her, until at last the interception of a letter by her irate father forces her to choose between revealing Brutus's identity or marrying the odious Collatin, her father's choice. In order to protect Brutus, Lucrèce enters into the marriage and resolves to play her role so perfectly that no one will suspect she has a secret admirer in the person of that lowly laughing stock. Brutus, for his part, renews his conspiracies against the Tarquins with added bitterness, realizing that they have stripped him of his one claim to happiness.

Within the linear progression of the frame story, explicit connections are drawn between Lucrèce and Clélie. In fact, Scudéry makes the blonde Clélie the first object of Sextus's passion, which rages up so quickly that her friend Amilcar relates the entire tale of Artaxander to try to distract the prince from his violent thoughts. It is only when Clélie's icy reception convinces Sextus that she is “too good and over-wise” (116) that the rake focuses his desires on the “Brown Beauty” of Lucrèce. But Clélie is no sooner free of that importunity than she is accosted by Sextus's father, who moans to her, “Set a price on your heart that I may purchase it” (160). Faced with equally disgusting persecutors, Lucrèce and Clélie strike up a solid mutual respect, but one that is soon cut short by the rape.

Predictably, the sensitive author drastically foreshortens the account of the assault itself, though she does add several ironic touches linking the two heroines. As Aronce travels with Brutus and Herminius to a safe house in Collatia, he catches sight of Lucretia's mansion and muses that luckily she is safe from death and “the exorbitance of a Tyrant” (311). Later, when Brutus delivers his remarkable, rousing speech to the Roman people, he explicitly mentions that Clélie is still a captive of Tarquin and may be “exposed to all the misfortunes of Lucretia” (316-17). The first military engagement of the struggle, a highly-detailed attack on the royal palace in Rome, is motivated as much by a desire to liberate Clélie as by the goal of dislodging Tullie and her henchmen.

Much later in the narrative, after numerous clashes in which Aronce is forced to fight on the side of his father and nearly loses Clélie's love because he has taken up arms against her father's homeland, the bond between Lucrèce and Clélie is reaffirmed when the protagonist is about to commit her famous deed of leading the escape of the virgins from Porsenna's camp. Scudéry tightens the psychological motivation in these events by preserving the life of Sextus, who in historical versions is killed at Gabii fairly early in the wars, but who here turns his lecherous intentions once again on Clélie and plots to carry her off, along with her fellow captives, who will be given to his sex-starved troops. One night Clélie has a prophetic dream: “Lucretia appeared to me, fairer than ever I saw her; her hair was disheveled, she was covered with a large white robe, and held a bloody ponyard in her hand. In this posture, methought I heard her voice, which was something terrifying. Flee, Clelia, flee, she said to me, but flee speedily, for I advertise you that the tyrant who caused me to have recourse to this ponyard has a design against your honor as he had against mine” (691). She spurs her companions to action by assuring them that, “If we die, we shall die with greater glory than Lucretia, since it will be in avoiding an unhappiness which she would not out-live” (692).

Scudéry seems determined to make history contingent upon the personal motivations of the characters involved. She undercuts the collective values that predominate in Du Ryer's work by repeatedly stressing the fickleness and instability of the Roman people and their Senate, who are only brought to proper actions by the greater cleverness of leaders such as Brutus and Publicola. It is significant that Brutus declares that the ousting of the Tarquins marks “the last day of slavery” rather than “the last day of monarchy,” as in the historical versions. Her continual use of the tag “tyrant” and her elaborate account of Tarquin's usurpation in the second book remind the reader that it is personal honor, rather than kingship itself, which is on trial. Nor is she apt to prize highly any values based on military glory, for she is careful to characterize vile old Tarquin as a very skillful and competent soldier, and to unmask Horace, Mucius, Spurius, and other crude “macho” men as flawed and desperate fanatics.

As the primary guardians of personal honor, Scudéry's women, and particularly Lucrèce and Clélie, are the veritable cornerstones of Roman society. In the midst of their isolation or captivity, a kind of existential choice allows them to dispose of the destinies of the men who adore them almost unconditionally. Whereas the chronicles of antiquity had consigned women to a largely accidental role in the process of history, and logical post-humanists like Du Ryer had tended to make them self-abnegating agents of broader moral issues, Scudéry gives them an integral role, for through a form of consent that only women can give, they wield the power to shape history itself. Though she articulates a heroic ideology that was already fast slipping into obsolescence, Scudéry at the same time anticipates the aesthetic triumph of the psychological novel by removing the stigma of passivity from her women and by making their feelings the major battleground of human meaning.

Notes

1. Arthur M. Young, while tracing international developments of the Lucretia story, ignores not only Du Ryer's contribution, but other versions in the Romance languages, as well.

2. Du Ryer's play does not seem to have any relation to a roughly contemporaneous Spanish text, Lucrecia y Tarquino, by Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla. The Italian source of the latter, Vergilio Malvezzi's Tarquino Superbo, was translated into Spanish as early as 1634, but its focus and organization are likewise completely different from Du Ryer's drama. The Spanish play was most likely composed before 1640. See the critical edition by Raymond R. MacCurdy, 4-39. As for Urbain Chevreau's awkward effort, La Lucresse romaine, its printing began slightly before that of Du Ryer's play, if we are to judge from the dates of the privilèges, but it has almost nothing structurally in common with its rival, and was probably spawned by theatrical competition in the wake of Du Ryer's success.

3. I refer to the forthcoming critical edition prepared by me and Perry Gethner.

4. Among several important representations of the rape of Lucretia in the visual arts, Artemisia Gentileschi's painting, dated 1645-50, is remarkable for its portrayal of a black slave present at the moment of violence. Du Ryer's play is unique in attributing the motive of personal freedom to the slave's complicity. Earlier canvases of the period had either shown a white, sometimes female accomplice (Titian, 1570; Florentine school, mid-1600's) or none at all (School of Titian, late 1500's). See Young, 117ff.

5. Henry Carrington Lancaster (1912) is probably correct in suggesting that the play was substantially complete in 1644, since it was purchased by the Illustre Théâtre in that year. The modern editor of Scévole, Giancarlo Fasano, does not mention Junie's relationship to Lucrece. While Lancaster (1932) does acknowledge a link between Du Ryer's plays, he attributes it more to historical proximity than to thematic design (556).

6. Junie refers directly to the wounded honor of Lucretia in her first attack on the Tarquins:

                       … ne présume pas qu'une
   honteuse crainte
   Dans la fille de Brute imprime quelque attainte,
   Si ce n'est que l'honneur qui void ses assassins
   Doive craindre par tout où l'on void les Tarquins.

   (v. 269-72)

7. Before learning of the apparent betrayal, Junie had given Scévole a place in her heart next to that of her homeland: “Amour de la patrie enfin pardonne moy / Si l'amour de Scevole y regne avecques toy” (v. 367-8). Even after learning of his plan, she is piqued that her lover might delay the mission in order to protect her from harm. She probes his lover's motives and suggests that, “ce grand dessein pour toy si dangereux / Sort d'un esprit jaloux plustost que genereux” (v. 559-60).

8. In her speech to Porsenne, Junie articulates the doctrine that leadership must be based ultimately on merit, addressing the king as, “Roy couronné deux fois, une fois par ton sang, / L'autre par ta vertu qui vaut mieux que ton rang” (v. 811-12). Du Ryer does not hesitate to put his highest political philosophy in the mouth of a woman. Although Porsenne declares, “Rome est trop peu pour toy” (v. 885) and offers to share the Etruscan throne with her if she will abandon her crusade for Roman freedom, she indignantly replies:

                                                                                                       Oublier ma patrie!
   Est-ce un Roy qui me parle, ou Tarquin en furie?
   Car ce sont les Tyrans et non pas les vrais Rois
   Qui prescrivent aux coeurs de si cruelles loys.

   (v. 897-900)

9. Fasano minimizes the impact of Du Ryer's republicanism, claiming that “L'antityrannie de Du Ryer n'a aucun contenu politique concret” (174n) and citing Junie's “profession de foi monarchiste” in Act III (173n). He fails to take into account, however, that the latter speech takes place in the context of Junie's attempt to sway Porsenna away from support of Tarquin, and that she limits her remarks to the Etruscan state, never once suggesting that Romans could ever again accept a monarch.

10. Junie shows Arons the proper example by demonstrating that she is able to overcome her love if this can aid either Scévole or her country:

    Je renonce en aveugle à mes propres desirs,
    Je forceray mon coeur sans jetter de soupirs.
    Triompher de l'amour sans effort et sans peine,
    C'est la moindre vertu que Rome nous apprenne.

    (v. 1377-80)

    But she then invites Arons to show similar self-control by giving up the opportunity to wed her and to prove his worth by saving Scévole without any further compensation:

    Veux-tu monstrer une ame et genereuse et belle,
    Et digne que Scevole ait combatu pour elle?
    Tire du precipice un amy si parfait
    Et le mets en estat de joüir d'un bien-fait.

    (v. 1391-94)

11. Ian Donaldson acknowledges Scudéry's contribution to the Lucretia figure, although he overemphasizes the passionate side of her character (84).

12. Cloelia, in the seventeenth harangue, makes her links to her predecessor quite explicit (192, 195).

13. Livy, II, 14 (vol. I, p. 129). Lancaster (1912) and Fasano both are of the opinion that Du Ryer's characterization owed something to the slightly expanded treatment of Arons or Aruns given in Dionysius of Halicarnassus' Roman Antiquities, V, 30.

14. All quotations come from the seventeenth-century English translation by John Davies and George Havers.

Works Cited

Aronson, Nicole. Mademoiselle de Scudéry ou le voyage au pays de Tendre. Paris, 1986.

Donaldson, Ian. The Rapes of Lucretia. Oxford, 1982.

Du Ryer, Pierre. Lucrece. Paris, 1638.

———. Lucrece. Ed. James F. Gaines and Perry Gethner (in preparation).

———. Scévole. Ed. Giancarlo Fasano. Bologna, 1966.

Godenne, René. Les Romans de Mlle de Scudéry. Geneva, 1983.

Lancaster, Henry Carrington. A History of French Dramatic Literature in the Seventeenth Century. Part II: The Period of Corneille 1635-1651. Baltimore, London, Paris, 1932.

———. Pierre Du Ryer, Dramatist. Washington, 1912.

Livy. The History of Rome. Trans. George Baker. London, 1822. 3rd ed. Vol. 1.

Niderst, Alain. Mademoiselle de Scudéry, Paul Pellisson et leur monde. Paris, 1976.

Rojas Zorrilla, Francisco de. Lucrecia y Tarquino. Ed. Raymond R. MacCurdy. Albuquerque, 1963.

Scudéry, Georges de (and Madeleine). Les Femmes Illustres, or the Heroic Harangues of the Illustrious Women. Trans. James Innes. Edinburgh, 1681.

———. Les Femmes Illustres, ou les harangues héroïques. Part 1. Paris, 1642. Part 2. Paris, 1644.

Scudéry, Madeleine de.—falsely attributed to Georges—Clelia. Trans. J. Davies and G. Havers. London, 1678.

———. Clélie. Paris, 1654-60. 5 vols.

Stanton, Domna. The Aristocrat as Art. New York, 1980.

Young, Arthur M. Echoes of Two Cultures. Pittsburgh, 1964.