Lucrece and Brutus – Glory in the Land of Tender

Madeleine de Scudéry (1607–1701) was a seventeenth-century French author of conversations, novellas, and novels, including Clélie, Histoire Romaine. Sharon Diane Nell is professor of French and dean of the School of Arts and Humanities at St. Edward’s University, Austin, Texas. She is the author of numerous articles and is the coeditor and cotranslator, with Aurora Wolfgang, of Jacques Du Bosc’s L’Honnête Femme: The Respectable Woman in Society and the New Collection of Letters and Responses by Contemporary Women.

“In this erudite and insightful work, Sharon Nell assembles and expertly translates passages from Madeleine de Scudéry’s corpus, illuminating the foundational story of Lucretia, a Roman matron who turns her rape by Sextus Tarquinius into an act of supreme heroism through her suicide, which ultimately causes the downfall of the Roman monarchy. Scudéry’s version of this story poetically intertwines two of the main cultural preoccupations of mid-seventeenth-century France concerning women: female heroism and salon life, including the notion of tender friendship. Nell exposes the centrality of the Lucretia story which sparked debates about female glory and virtue originating in antiquity and continuing unabated through the seventeenth century, demonstrating that era’s intense preoccupation with the proper role of women.”

• Acknowledgments Illustrations Abbreviations Introduction The Other Voice About This Volume Queen of Tender: The Life and Times of Madeleine de Scudéry Scudéry’s Legacy and the Afterlife of the Texts in This Volume Note on the Translation Glory and Woman before Clélie: Lucrece and Cloelia in the Femmes Illustres (1642) Lucrece to Colatin Cloelia to Porsenna The Language of Tender in Clélie, Part 1, Book 1 (1654) Conversation on the Power of Inclination Conversation on the Birth of Love The Map of the Land of Tender Lucrece and Brutus in Clélie: Glory in the Land of Tender Collatin Takes His Comrades to Visit Lucrece at Collatia, from Clélie, Part 1, Book 3 (1654) “Story of Lucius Junius Brutus,” from Clélie, Part 2, Book 1 (1655) Lucrece’s Suicide and Brutus’s Speech, from Clélie, Part 2, Book 3 (1655) Lucrece Appears to Brutus in a Dream, from Clélie, Part 3, Book 3 (1657) Lucrece Appears to Clelie in a Dream, from Clélie, Part 5, Book 2 (1660) Scudéry on Glory after Clélie Discourse on Glory (1671) Appendix A: Lucrece and Brutus: Sources from Livy to Augustine and Seventeenth-Century France Appendix B: Glossary Appendix C: List of Characters Bibliography Index