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KING LEAR CONTEXT - Coggle Diagram
KING LEAR CONTEXT
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GENDER AND THE FAMILY
Filial gratitude - love and grateful emotions towards the parent
Cordelia's actions show filial ingratitude which a Jacobean audience could have seen as a sin which Shakespeare mocks
This is the same for Edgar and Edmund - their actions would have shocked the Jacobean audience and portrayed them as villainous
More modern readings of the play put more emphasis on Lear as a bad parent
Edmund as a MACHIAVELLIAN character
- cunning, scheming, and unscrupulous, especially in politics.
He is the bastard, illegitimate son of Gloucester, and thus has no claim to land or power due to the nature of primogeniture, which is why he strives for it so intently
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Primogeniture - the eldest son inherits
Goneril could be seen as rightfully angry as she is cheated out of her full inheritance
- The daughter's role was to honour her family
- A daughter was the property of her father and worth her dowery
- Women's role was to perpetuate an heir
- Women were politically and economically excluded
The perfect son was recreated in the father's image - arguably Elizabeth was created in the image of Henry VIII even though he didn't want her as he needed a son
Kathleen McCluskie sees King Lear as an 'anti-feminine' play.
The play shows female self-assertion and sexual desire as a source of evil, and male control of society as natural
POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES
the Renaissance brought an end for the most part to feudalism and helped establish an effective central government
Marxism - re-distribution of wealth. A criticism of the king having too much material wealth and he is blinded by this
Delany suggests that the tragedy is that of a traditional feudal society being challenged by a more modern outlook that is rational and individuality and has no respect for their values
Feudal characters - Lear, Gloucester, Kent
- the ruling nobility were of a higher genetic order than the mere labouring commoners.
- subservient behaviour will be rewarded in the afterlife
- there was a natural and theologically ordained order of rank with prescribed social roles
- the loss of power is directly linked to the loss of land
Capitalist characters - Edmund, Regan and Goneril
There is still Avery rigid class structure which is seen through Edgar as despite his disguise, he can always return to power and always gives off the air of authority and status where as Edmund can never rise
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King Lear is situated at the juncture between the old feudal form and the emerging capitalist form of society
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TRAGEDY
Tragedy is a form of drama based on human suffering that invokes in its audience an accompanying catharsis or pleasure in the viewing
ARISTOTLE'S POETICS - 'tragedy is enacted, not recited, and through pity and fear, it effects relief to such similar emotions'
- a great person who experiences a reversal of fortune (peripeteia) of good to bad, is better because it evokes sympathy
- this reversal of fortune must be caused by the tragic hero's harmartia - tragic flaw
- the misfortune is brought about "by some particular error or frailty"
- the reversal is inevitable and brought about by the hero not by higher power
- if the downfall is as a result of an external force, Aristotle said this was a misadventure and not a tragedy
- the tragic hero may acheive some revelation or recognition (anagnorisis) about human fate, destiny, and the will of the gods
HEGEL - 'it is the honour of these characters to be culpable'
- tragedy arises when a hero courageously asserts a substantial and just position but in doing to simultaneously violates a contrary and likewise just position and so falls prey to a one-sidedness that is defined by greatness and guilt
- tragedy is the conflict of two substantive positions, each of which is justified yet each of which is wrong to the extent that it fails either to recognise the validity of the other position or to grant it its true moment
- conflict can only be resolved with the fall of the hero
- the heroes nature is paradoxical in its acting for and against the good
- he is both great and flawed
- the heroes is both innocent and guilty
NIETZCHE - tragedy is a from of art that affirms presentness, the here and now. Tragedy is thus both a positive and constructive experience
- maintains that the greek knew well that life is terrible, inexplicable, non-transcendent and dangerous yet didn't surrender to pessism by turning their back on it
- instead they traumatised the world and human life through art
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RELIGION
PROTESTANT REFORMATION
- seemed to reject the medieval form of christianity
- Monk Martin Luther disagreed with church policy leading him to challenge some of the most fundamental doctrines of the church which led him and his followers to break away from the Catholic Church, forming the protestants
- rejection of the Pope as a spiritual leader
- rejection of the authority of the Church and its Preoests
- salvation was only granted through direct communication with God - achieved by reading the bible and was only possible through faith in God's grace
- some protestants believed after the fall of Adam, human nature was totally corrupted
- it set the individual conscious and not church authority at the centre of religion
Disputes between Protestants and Catholics fostered religious scepticism.
Shakespeare's plays are remarkable free from direct religious sentiment, leading to the questioning of where his sympathies lie.
King Lear is set in a pre-Christian Britain
Paganism - a diverse encompassing of religious beliefs. It worships many gods and goddesses but is rooted in nature
The ambiguity of this combined with Christian references diminishes the power of the Gods in the play
Nihilism - the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless which is seen in the death of Cordelia and Gloucester's desire to die furthered by Edgar failing to reveal himself in the face of suicide
THE RENAISSANCE
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Five key issues:
- movement known as humanism
- literary doctrine of 'imitation' and the idea nothing is new
- the reformation
- significant changes taking place
- association with classical antiquities and dissasociation with the Middle Ages - still held certain beliefs and ideas
- strong ideas and beliefs in Roman and Greek ideologies seen in Gloucester's eye gouging which was the Roman and Greek punishment for adultery
HUMANISM
- placed a great emphasis upon the dignity of man and upon the expanded possibilities of human life
- shift from the 'contemplative life' to the 'active life'
- highest cultural values usually associated with active involvement in public life
- valued individual achievement, breadth of knowledge and personal aspiration
'IMITATION'
"following predecessors"
- contemporary critics believed great literary works that expressed definitive moral values had already been written in classical antiquity
- classical antiquity - newly rediscovered classics of literature, history and moral philosophy
- capture the spirit of the originals
- faithful depiction of human behaviour was paramount
- the golden age of theatre - led by theatre