critics Flashcards
Elton on Cordelia’s death and Gloucester’s blindness
an upside down providence in an apparently deranged universe
Kettle
‘a society in turmoil’ a conflict between those who accept the old order and ‘the new people the indivdulaists’
the play is about power property and inheritance
Dollymore
Gloucester will find ‘insight through blindness’ and Lear ‘wisdom through madness in the plays key twinned moral provocations’
Cunningham
Harold Bloom
conveys most potently mans fragility, fallibility and fatality’
Johnson
a play in which the wicked prosper and the virtuous miscarry
‘he is not even allowed to die tragically’
20th century Knight on the absurd cruelty
Cordelia is the ‘living emblem of womanly dignity’
George Brandes late 19th century
‘the fool is Lear’s alter ego his externalised conscience’
Goldsmith
an anti-feminine play ‘the threat of the family posed by female insubordination. Cordelia is merely an example of patriarchy restored’
feminist McCluskie
Lears identity is a social construction he looses his mind when he looses his status
Dollimore
the outcome of king lear
is not just but appropriate sinners have been punished cathartic
old old story
of filial ingratitude
is mankind
cruel or kind
