ABSTRACT
The feminine Eros is not magnified by the mythological reference, but buried in the symbolic structures of the play and of the poem. Titus Andronicus and The Rape of Lucrece appropriate the Ovidian Philomel as an emblematic figure of music which addresses the issue of tragic feminine love. The comparison between the dirge and the natural song of the bird is closely related to this rhetorical treatment, a statement of the supremacy of human art over nature. The non-semantic expression of woe is conveyed by the merging of three channels of communication, in a combination that enhances rhetorical amplification. The metaphor of tears has a close linkage with the ambivalent relationship between Lavinia and the rhetorical Philomel. Animal metaphors also stress the fact that although Lucrece is innocent, the rape strips her of her humanity, which is conveyed by ambivalent animal imagery.
