Publisher's Synopsis
This research on Trojan myths examines them in two works by Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida and the rape of Lucrece, and analyzes the myth of Penthelese in Quintus of Smyrna and Heinrich von Kleist. The Trojan War is seen from many angles: the reasons for it, the deliberations over its continuation and the possibilities for ending it, the hope and failure of fraternization. Drawing parallels with her own tragic fate in a process of identification with the victims of the Trojan War following the offense to the laws of hospitality of which she is also the victim, Lucrece commits suicide.
