Shakespeare, the Ekphrastic Translator

Abstract

In The Rape of Lucrece, the Shakespearean heroine admires a wall-painting illustrating a scene from the Trojan War. The two hundred lines of the poem in which Lucrece describes the ancient characters involved in the war represent a remarkable piece of ekphrastic transposition. It produces a vivid effect in the poem’s narrative, draws attention to the power of ekphrasis in guiding the reader’s interpretation, and represents an unrivalled example of embedded ekphrasis, unique in Renaissance poetry.

Keywords

• Shakespeare
• Rape of Lucrece
• ekphrasis
• inter-semiotic transposition
• verbal and visual codes
• translation process