Defacing Troy: From Shakespeare’s <i>The Rape of Lucrece</i> to Medieval Manuscripts

Abstract Shakespeare’s 1594 The Rape of Lucrece recounts the eponymous character’s defacement of an image of the Fall of Troy. When reread in light of a widespread medieval practice of defacing images, including those in manuscripts about Troy, Lucrece’s act is not (solely) a metaphor or a literary device, but an indication of how visual matter could be touched in premodern Europe. Reciprocally, Shakespeare’s poem provides a rare glimpse of the complex affective and psychological dynamics behind medieval defacements of Troy (or otherwise), for which very little documentary evidence survives.