P2 Flashcards
Division of the kingdom 5
Eagleton: Lear voids the referent while clutching at the empty signifier
Ryan: Labels Lear as a fool of time as he is stranded back in a brutal alien reality which eventually crushes him completely (No, not time’s fault, the fault of his selfish actions)
The love test 5
Froan: The play is an early critique of capitalism and selfishness
Banishment 5
Worrall: The declining power of the monarch demonstrates not how to rule, but how not to rule.
Edgar’s soliloquy 5
Cott: Edmund exists outside the framework of their society, he appears only temporarily, an invasion in their world
The fool 5
Jan Knott: the fool knows that the only true madness is to recognise this world as rational
Kent’s disguise 5
Hern: Appearances and self perception are confused, and words, written and spoken are deceptive
Goneril’s infertility 5
John McRae: Dysfunctional families have been a staple in drama from Euripides and Sophocles onwards
Death in final scene 5
Cott: King Lear is a play about the disintegration of the world
John McRae: When Lear cries out Howl Howl at the death of Cordelia, it is a reprise of what he was doing against nature on the heath, because it is against nature for the child to die before the parent
Laurence Coupe: King Lear offers us no definite vision of the future. We are left only with the worthy moralising of the new king
Lear on the heath
Ryan: The tragedies make it clear that the protagonists could evolve under different lines given they were under a different conceivable circumstance
Gloucester eyes
Goldberg: there is no supernatural justice, only human natural justice
Gloucester on heath
John McRae: Tragedy of nature, rather than a tragedy of old age
Gloucester on heath
John McRae: Tragedy of nature, rather than a tragedy of old age
