Beatrice Cenci : a violent revolting feminine voice out of a myth and a portrait

Abstract EN

Based on a true story, which captured his imagination during his visit to Rome, and on his knowledge of the Guido Reni's striking portrait of a beautiful young woman alleged to be Beatrice Cenci, P.

B.

Shelley presents his The Cenci with his tragic heroine Beatrice Cenci.

The play shows one of the major Romantic ideals of Shelley which is mankind's ability to resist the power of cruelty.

Beatrice is a symbol of a heroic resistance to tyranny with an actual event of a woman as the chief actor and sufferer; the tragedy of womanhood is what Shelley was after.

The anticipation of Beatrice Cenci is her way of meeting the intolerable wrong.

Divine justice was her weapon to strike down the criminal instead of the fierce vengeance.

And though deemed 'unnatural' due to the murdering act she committed towards her father by the nineteenth century readers, Beatrice Cenci is portrayed as a vehicle of divine power and justice, a figure above the laws of society and reason itself.

She is portrayed as a divine avenger.-