King Lear A03

Question 1

King Lear

Answer 1

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”.

Question 2

17th Century Criticism

Answer 2

• not as successful as Macbeth and Hamlet but well recieved in James I court.
• Uncertaintly of the kingdom

Question 3

18th Century criticism- Joseph Wharton

Answer 3

1. Subplot was unlikely and distracting
2. Goneril and Regan’s actions too diabolical to be realistic

Question 4

18th Century Criticism- Samuel Johnson

Answer 4

1. Lack of justice at the end
2. Found Cordelia’s death “deeply shocking”

Innocence was not rewarded

Question 5

19th Century

Answer 5

Some see Cordelia as a Jesus like figure with Christian values redeeming Lear like Edgar

Question 6

19th Century Criticism- Hazlitt

Answer 6

Believed Shakespeare showed a “firm faith in final piety” (Philosophical ethical system developed by Chinese philosopher which is the virtue of respect ones parents)

Question 7

19th Century criticism - George Brandes

Answer 7

Cordelia is the “living emblem of womanly dignity”.

Question 8

Aristotle Poetics

Answer 8

• Tragedy must contain characters of a higher type
• Plots are either simple or complex
  
  • Tragedy should be due to great flaw

Question 9

Nietzsche- The Birth of Tragedy 1871

Answer 9

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.

Question 10

AC Bradley - Shakespearian Tragedy

Answer 10

The calamaties of tragedy do not simply happen,nor are they sent, they precede mainly from action.

Question 11

John Dollimore

Answer 11

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

Question 12

Tennonhouse

Answer 12

play reaffirmed the importance of following a patriarchal society and shows the dangers of disobeying.

Question 13

The Fool- Jan Kott

Answer 13

” The Fool…rejects all appearances, of law, justice and moral order. He sees brute force, cruelty and lust. He has no illusions”

Question 14

Michael Reist

-S & P

Answer 14

Shakespeares King Lear is a play that straddles the social and political divisions between these times

Question 15

Michael Reist

Answer 15

Edmund is a renaissance man because of his questioning nature and his will to better his station in the court and society.

Question 16

Psychoanalytical Feminist reading- Peter L Rudnytsky

-Gloucester

Answer 16

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.

Question 17

Psychoanalytical Feminist reading- Peter L Rudnytsky

• Children

Answer 17

Both have children polarised by “good” and “evil”

Question 18

Psychoanalytical Feminist reading- Peter L Rudnytsky

• fear of women

Answer 18

A fear of women’s power to cuckold their husbands haunts all of Shakespeares works

Question 19

Psychoanalytical Feminist reading- Peter L Rudnytsky

Gloucester adultery

Answer 19

Gloucester is unique in Shakespeare portraying the consequence of male adultery

Question 20

Psychoanalytical Feminist reading- Peter L Rudnytsky

Lear- masc and fem

Answer 20

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.

Question 21

Psychoanalytical Feminist reading- Peter L Rudnytsky

Kent

Answer 21

Unlike Lear, Kent shows utter masculinity expressed philosophically by his stoicism

Question 22

Psychoanalytical Feminist reading- Peter L Rudnytsky

Bloom: Edgar

Answer 22

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

Question 23

Psychoanalytical Feminist reading- Peter L Rudnytsky

Albany

Answer 23

Albany too who survives till the end only doesn so by purging himself of feminine traits- “milky gentleness”

Question 24

Psychoanalytical Feminist reading- Peter L Rudnytsky

Cordelia- death

Answer 24

Cordelias death shatters the morality-play pattern and send King Lear into the abyss of tragedy

Question 25

Psychoanalytical Feminist reading- Peter L Rudnytsky

Cordelia- misogyny

Answer 25

Cordelia is the logical cumulation of the misogyny in the play

Question 26

Psychoanalytical Feminist reading- Peter L Rudnytsky

Edmund and Cordelia

Answer 26

Edmund kill Cordelia is the epitome of masculinity slaying femininity

Question 27

Psychoanalytical Feminist reading- Peter L Rudnytsky

Pelican Daughters

Answer 27

• Pelicans shed their own blood to feed its young- and emblem of sacrifice but here is denotes ruthless destructiveness.

Question 28

Phallic Women - Zong- Cheng Liu

Goneril

Answer 28

• depreciates her status as an androcentric milieu
• emulated male vibes
• mentions her love is more precious than eyesight, space and liberty.

“Also refers to health, beauty and honour which are the requirements of male desire.”

Question 29

Phallic Women - Zong- Cheng Liu

-power struggle

Answer 29

“The original struggle for the phallus power of men now evolves into competition of biological instinct by losing power in cause of the desire to have a man “

Question 30

Khan

Answer 30

Lear breaks down when he refuses to accept he is dependent on his daughters and he needs the feminine.

Question 31

Kathleen Mckluskie

Answer 31

“Presents women as the source of primal lust and forces the audience to feel pathos for men of the play “

Question 32

Mckluskie

Answer 32

“The audience is forced to believe that women in power create a chaotic world”.