SOURCE: Washington, Edward T. “Vanishing Villains: The Role of Tarquin in Shakespeare's Lucrece.” Upstart Crow 14 (1994): 126-38.
In the following essay, Washington contends that Tarquin, understood to be the poem's villain, serves to emphasize a complex pattern of meaning at work in The Rape of Lucrece. Through both Lucrece and Tarquin, Washington maintains, we are encouraged to see Lucrece as a personification of an outdated mode of literary expression, that of Petrarchan perfection, and to view Tarquin as the means by which Lucrece's literary hegemony is necessarily purged.
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