Destruction of family bonds

Question 1

Paragraph themes

Answer 1

One - Lear’s blindness
Two - Edmund
Three - G/R victimized

Question 2

Paragraph one - Lear’s blindness

Answer 2

1) King Lear begins with separation in Lear’s search for order

2) “Nothing can come of nothing”
-echoes Leibniz ‘ex nihlo nihil fit’ reflects the creation stories. Lear tries to find purpose and meaning.

3) Ironically tragic as Lear because “nothing” and reflects the Fool’s dictum “thou art nothing.”

4) Descent into madness as contravenes the Great Chain of Being

5) Kermode states that “Under the Fine clothes, there is nothing but greed and lust,”

6) Rejects Cordelia’s “love” of her “bond” family love (storage) and gluttony for sycophantic hyperboles “space time and liberty”

7) Mathew 25 – wealth is not a measure of worth

Question 3

Paragraph two:

Answer 3

1) Bagliacca “the true victim of the play is Edmund”

2) If Gloucester had been kinder to Edmund then Edmund may not have needed to be so deceitful

3) Edmund second born so would not have inherited under laws of primogeniture even if he was legitimate yet

4) With semantic satiation ‘legitimate’, or more appropriately the plosive reiteration of ‘base’ to convey his disgust at the title and render concept meaningless

5) No fatherly love only “sport” in his making and described as a “whoreson”
Prose form – Jacobean audience would be able to ‘hear’ bawdiness of interaction

6) Edmund becomes a victim of a prejudice, in which he internalises into self-loathing and calls a “great foppery of the world” as he denies traditional convention

Question 4

Paragraph three: G/R

Answer 4

1) Faber: “Devoid of innocence”

2) Patriarchal system – Women lower on the Great Chain of Being. Fear if they contravened their fathers wishes

3) “I love you more than space, time and liberty”
Hyperboles – magnanimity of love and despite being ‘nothing’ she does not want to come between “the dragon and its wrath”

4) “degenerate bastard” “unnatural hag”
“Hag” – 17th Century superstitions of Witchcraft (Demonology) when G/R oppose him villainised

5) After rejection Gonreil and Lear turn violent
Regan turns physically violent when she makes Glouceter blind and tells him to “smell his way to Dover”

6) What happens when Great chain of being is perverted and the natural order is disposed

Question 5

Critics

Answer 5

One- Kermode states that “Under the Fine clothes, there is nothing but greed and lust,”
Two - Bagliacca “the true victim of the play is Edmund”
Three - Faber: “Devoid of innocence”