Office and Duty in King Lear: Shakespeare's Political Theologies

ISBN-13: 9783031401565 / Angielski

Alexander Thom

Spis treści

1 Introduction

Works Cited

2 The Majesty of Kingship: Spectacular and Sacred Sovereign Power

2.1 Spectacular Power

2.2 The Sanctity of Kingship

2.3 Majesty and Treason

Works Cited

3 “The Bloody Proclamation to Escape”: Edgar and Romantic Outlawry

3.1 The Legitimate

3.2 The Ascetic Outlaw

3.3 The Catastrophic Advent

Works Cited

4 Dividing Between Daughters

Works Cited

5 Lear’s Redemption

5.1 The Anxiety of Impotence

5.2 “He Hath Ever But Slenderly Known Himself”: Parrēsia and Nosce te ipsum

5.3 “Take Physic, Pomp”: The Storm and The Cynic

5.4 “A Dog’s Obeyed In Office”: Lear’s Redemption

Works Cited

6 Conclusion: Lear’s Shadow, Office Today

Works Cited

Index

O autorze

Dr Alexander Thom is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the School of English, University of Leeds, UK. His postdoctoral research focuses on the displaced in English Renaissance drama. This book is based on his Midlands3Cities AHRC doctorate, which was awarded in 2020 by the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, UK.

Blurb

This book advances five original readings of Shakespeare's King Lear, influenced by Giorgio Agamben, but tempered by primary research into Jacobean literature, law, religion, and philosophy. To grasp Lear’s encounter between politics and identity, the play demands a wider understanding of the religious influence on political thought. As Lear himself realises, sovereignty is an extreme, glamorous example of a deeper category: sacred office. Lear also shows duty intersecting with a hierarchy of bastards, outlaws, women, waifs, and monks. This book introduces concepts like petit treason, civil death, and waivery into political theological studies, complicating Agamben’s models. Goneril’s treason shows the sovereign’s consort and children are consecrated lives too. Lear’s crisis of "self-knowing" stages a landmark critique of office. The promise of his poignant speech before the prison is foreclosed by Shakespeare's invention: an officer dutifully murdering Cordelia. This book’s conclusion, through Hannah Arendt, reconsiders Lear’s persistent association with the Holocaust.

Dr Alexander Thom is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the School of English, University of Leeds, UK. His postdoctoral research focuses on the displaced in English Renaissance drama. This book is based on his Midlands3Cities AHRC doctorate, which was awarded in 2020 by the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, UK.