literally means 'rebirth' and was the age of new discoveries north intellectual and geographical

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

As a king, you can't separate these two parts of a whole.

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

the Renaissance brought an end for the most part to feudalism and helped establish an effective central government

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

Any property of the monarch was regarded as part of the royal states and not owned by the monarch as an individual

The Kings body politic included the body natural and are incoporated into one, indivisible
The politic was the father of the nation

Lear divides the indivisible for in dividing the kingdom, he acts in the body natural, doing what is not permitted in the body politic, and so divides not only his lands but himself
He can not stop being King, yet gives his power away

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

Edmund and Edgar's relationship has parallels to the Biblical story of Cain and Abel

Primogeniture - the eldest son inherits
Goneril could be seen as rightfully angry as she is cheated out of her full inheritance

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

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 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

Significance of the map - a symbol of wealth and land but also vulnerability as it can be torn up easily suggesting a weakness

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

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

Idea of a means and a mode of production

King Lear is situated at the juncture between the old feudal form and the emerging capitalist form of society