King Lear A03 Flashcards
King Lear
Peripeteia- Giving away his land
hamartia- Naive and Blind
Anagnorisis- Ater being driven out by his daughters and left in the storm he sees truth . After he recovers from madness- “I am a very foolish fond old man”.
17th Century Criticism
- not as successful as Macbeth and Hamlet but well recieved in James I court.
- Uncertaintly of the kingdom
18th Century criticism- Joseph Wharton
- Subplot was unlikely and distracting
- Goneril and Regan’s actions too diabolical to be realistic
18th Century Criticism- Samuel Johnson
- Lack of justice at the end
- Found Cordelia’s death “deeply shocking”
Innocence was not rewarded
19th Century
Some see Cordelia as a Jesus like figure with Christian values redeeming Lear like Edgar
19th Century Criticism- Hazlitt
Believed Shakespeare showed a “firm faith in final piety” (Philosophical ethical system developed by Chinese philosopher which is the virtue of respect ones parents)
19th Century criticism - George Brandes
Cordelia is the “living emblem of womanly dignity”.
Aristotle Poetics
- Tragedy must contain characters of a higher type
- Plots are either simple or complex
- Tragedy should be due to great flaw
Nietzsche- The Birth of Tragedy 1871
tragic heros are of a high status which creates social distance and their reactions are overdramaticsed as they commit murder, suicide ect.
Furthermore, every tragedy ends with catharsis.
E.G. drama of Lears death [dies] comes from Cordelias death.
AC Bradley - Shakespearian Tragedy
The calamaties of tragedy do not simply happen,nor are they sent, they precede mainly from action.
John Dollimore
Believes King Lear isn’t about cruelty or heroism but about class. Lears identity is a social construction, when he loses his identity and is stripped back he is forced to question his identity
Tennonhouse
play reaffirmed the importance of following a patriarchal society and shows the dangers of disobeying.
The Fool- Jan Kott
” The Fool…rejects all appearances, of law, justice and moral order. He sees brute force, cruelty and lust. He has no illusions”
Michael Reist
-S & P
Shakespeares King Lear is a play that straddles the social and political divisions between these times
Michael Reist
Edmund is a renaissance man because of his questioning nature and his will to better his station in the court and society.
Psychoanalytical Feminist reading- Peter L Rudnytsky
-Gloucester
Gloucester’s blinding is a symbolic castration which leaves him with two bleeding vaginas on his face as opposed to two testcular eyeballs. The blindness links to Oedipus.
Psychoanalytical Feminist reading- Peter L Rudnytsky
- Children
Both have children polarised by “good” and “evil”
Psychoanalytical Feminist reading- Peter L Rudnytsky
- fear of women
A fear of women’s power to cuckold their husbands haunts all of Shakespeares works
Psychoanalytical Feminist reading- Peter L Rudnytsky
Gloucester adultery
Gloucester is unique in Shakespeare portraying the consequence of male adultery
Psychoanalytical Feminist reading- Peter L Rudnytsky
Lear- masc and fem
As Lear grows mad thinking about his daughters cruelty he experiences the conflict of growing angry and his desire to weep which are masculine and feminine.
Psychoanalytical Feminist reading- Peter L Rudnytsky
Kent
Unlike Lear, Kent shows utter masculinity expressed philosophically by his stoicism
Psychoanalytical Feminist reading- Peter L Rudnytsky
Bloom: Edgar
Bloom: Edgar is “Shakespeare’s representative in the play”. This trait is crucial and is why Shakespeare refused to hint at a love interest between Edgar and Cordelia.
-Elizabethan society doesn’t have honesty
Psychoanalytical Feminist reading- Peter L Rudnytsky
Albany
Albany too who survives till the end only doesn so by purging himself of feminine traits- “milky gentleness”
Psychoanalytical Feminist reading- Peter L Rudnytsky
Cordelia- death
Cordelias death shatters the morality-play pattern and send King Lear into the abyss of tragedy
