Select one of the critical essays in the Lear section and provide a coherent representation of the author's main points, including specific quotes from the author. 200-250 words.
23 Comments
Georgie P
6/1/2014 07:14:54 pm
Daniels, Anthony. Diagnosing Lear. The New Criterion. June 2007. 1-6.
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Maurie
6/1/2014 07:18:33 pm
Daniels, Anthony. Diagnosing Lear. The New Criterion. June 2007.
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Darel M
6/1/2014 07:20:11 pm
Green, Andrew. "King Lear and the problem of the word: how far is the word to be relied on in the deceitful world Shakespeare creates in King Lear? Andrew Green explores the play's treatment of the relationship between language and truth." The English Review Feb. 2002: 6+. Gale Power Search. Web. 7 Apr. 2012.
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Trey C.
6/1/2014 07:27:07 pm
Spotswood, Jerald W. "Maintaining hierarchy in 'The Tragedie of King Lear.'." Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 38.2 (1998): 265+. Gale Power Search. Web. 8 Apr. 2012.
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Angela B.
6/1/2014 07:27:56 pm
Green, Andrew. "King Lear and the problem of the word: how far is the word to be relied on in the deceitful world Shakespeare creates in King Lear? Andrew Green explores the play's treatment of the relationship between language and truth." The English Review Feb. 2002: 6+. Gale Power Search. Web. 7 Apr. 2012.
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Stephen Mitchell
6/1/2014 07:40:44 pm
In Anthony Daniels’s critical essay, “Diagnosing King Lear,” Daniels argues that the doctors and psychoanalysts who have labored for the past two centuries to correctly identify the malady that of plagues King Lear have completely missed the point of the tragedy that King Lear had to endure. Though he is not completely “against all diagnostic effort,” he recognizes that, for one, King Lear is a monarch, and such a specimen is mostly unknown to doctors and psychoanalysts, “so few of [them] having either experienced or witnessed that condition of man.” Daniels believes that the nature of King Lear’s disease is irrelevant, and the reason that Shakespeare did (possibly) include his sickness is what people should be getting out of the story. His madness is not the culprit of the cause of realm shattering into war. It is simply a device to help reveal the true culprit: lack of moral judgment. Daniels then goes on to explain how Edmund became the villain capable of turning on both his father and brother. Edmund states that “Nature,” or “his inborn inclinations, untutored and unconstrained by the moral refinement of society,” “art [Edmund’s] goddess,” and he has no intention of letting “the moral refinement of human society” deprive him of his desires. Even while dying, Edmund has the last laugh by revealing that he had ordered the execution of Cordelia, in spite of her obvious innocence. Despite a soliloquy intent upon garnering sympathy for bastards, the vile nature of Edmund is clear due to his want of revenge and lack of a moral compass. Daniels makes a similar argument with Goneril and Regan, who play their generous father like a fool, counting on his age to allow them to “receive not alone the imperfections of long-engrafted condition, but therewithal the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with [him],” ready cast him aside once he has provided what they desired. As well, this lack of moral judgment is seen at the end of the story as well, when Goneril kills her own sister in order to be with Edmund. Daniels asserts that regardless of affliction, ”Lear has earned the right to his [madness]”, and that the true problem was “that so many people who haven’t earned their right and – besides- want their outbursts to be taken as the literal truth and the foundation of policy.”
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Conner Brown
6/1/2014 07:43:08 pm
In his essay “Diagnosing Lear,” Anthony Daniels sets out to correct in the incorrect assumption that Lear suffered from a mental illness and that is why tragedy befalls upon him. Daniels argues that Lear was not mad, but simply a victim of circumstance. He was like one of the “very foolish, fond old men” whom Daniel’s wife would care for. They “had given away their houses to their children in return for the right to live there. So Lear’s condition is not particularly special, therefore denying us the ability to to label him as a “maniac”, “bipolar” or suffering from “thwarted incest.”
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rachel
6/1/2014 07:47:13 pm
Green, Andrew. "King Lear and the problem of the word: how far is the word to be relied on in the deceitful world Shakespeare creates in King Lear? Andrew Green explores the play's treatment of the relationship between language and truth." The English Review Feb. 2002: 6+. Gale Power Search. Web. 7 Apr. 2012.
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Cj W.
6/2/2014 02:57:15 am
Green, Andrew. "King Lear and the problem of the word: how far is the word to be relied on in the deceitful world Shakespeare creates in King Lear? Andrew Green explores the play's treatment of the relationship between language and truth." The English Review Feb. 2002: 6+. Gale Power Search. Web. 7 Apr. 2012.
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Angelique K.
6/2/2014 04:19:51 am
Daniels, Anthony. Diagnosing Lear. The New Criterion. June 2007. 1-6.
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Beau
6/2/2014 10:38:07 pm
Green points out the main key ideas in King Lear, which he claims to be “the gap which lies between utterance and truth” as well as the importance and difference of speech in general. Also he emphasizes on the use of words throughout the book, contrasted with silence, for example when Lear gives his daughters an impossible task: to orally express exactly how much they love him. “The progression of King Lear can be seen as a study of the devaluation of the word in a society” (Green) while the value and meaning of talk changes through the whole story. There are also forms of “’forbidden’ words and topics within society a subjects which are [. . .] unfit for speech” (Green). Characters that don’t follow the rules, he says, and speak when they’re not supposed to, get their punishment. In addition to silence and the wrong use of words, “King Lear also considers the breakdown of language” (Green). Green additionally questions Lear’s wisdom by including the description of Lear’s banishment of Kent. Green argues that Lear’s actions undermine his “earlier equation that words are synonymous with worth and to reverse it”. Irony is present in the play as Lear’s actions from Act 1 directly challenge the ideas and actions he takes in the duration of the play. Green approaches the end of his analysis of King Lear with the idea that madness provides refuge for characters living in a world where “such emphasis is placed on speech and where the consequences of speaking unacceptably are so great (Green 4).
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Yahaira S.
6/2/2014 11:25:40 pm
Green, Andrew. "King Lear and the problem of the word: how far is the word to be relied on in the deceitful world Shakespeare creates in King Lear? Andrew Green explores the play's treatment of the relationship between language and truth." The English Review Feb. 2002: 6+. Gale Power Search. Web. 7 Apr. 2012.
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Julia
6/3/2014 04:54:34 am
Daniels, Anthony. Diagnosing Lear. The New Criterion. June 2007.
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Raegan C
6/3/2014 05:23:04 am
Papprill, Alan. “The Stoic Universe of Lear: The Role of Kent in Lear’s Court”.
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daniel c.
6/3/2014 07:17:08 pm
Green, Andrew. "King Lear and the problem of the word: how far is the word to be relied on in the deceitful world Shakespeare creates in King Lear? Andrew Green explores the play's treatment of the relationship between language and truth." The English Review Feb. 2002: 6+. Gale Power Search. Web. 7 Apr. 2012.
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Molly R
6/3/2014 07:25:18 pm
In Alan Paprill’s “The Stoic Universe of Lear”, he analyses Shakespeare’s play King Lear through, “the lens of Elizabethan philosophy of stoic fatalism”. In this, Paprill discusses how this stoicism has attributed to the character’s actions. In addition, Paprill divides stoic fatalism by separately examining stoicism and the role and death in the play. The main character discussed by Paprill is the main character of the play: King Lear. Each of the characters is affected by his stoicism and his death. Paprill starts out by defining stoic fatalism as a moral philosophy that, “whatever can happen may happen” and then compares it to an uncontrollable wheel that can, “just as easily elevate on as destroy one”. With this in mind, Paprill starts to compare the perception of death in the 21st century to that of the time in which King Lear was written. In Elizabethan times, death was considered and inevitable factor; death wasn’t sugar-coated. Paprill adds that many people of this time meditated on their death and just accepted its reality. This contributes to the novel because it accounts for the, “procession of death”. In the context of the play, death is considered, “a reality to be accepted and understood as inevitable”. Therefore, Paprill states that it is almost more appropriate to consider the universe as a roulette wheel in which one decision forces everyone to fall into a certain place. Paprill then starts to discuss how Cordelia and Kent were the only two truthful characters in the play, but Lear ignored them and banished them. Lear only believes and semi-cares for the ones who have betrayed him. Paprill notes that this shows a society that has been, “broken up by capitalism and the parallel rise of the selfish ego consumed by a single-minded focus on status and profit”. Although, a disguised Kent returns portraying his stoicism hoping to help Lear in addition to acting as a control of stoicism in which to compare Oswald to. The ending of the play, where everyone dies, is one last example of how stoic fatalism has affected the novel.
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Gabrielle L
6/3/2014 07:49:46 pm
Anthony Daniels, in his essay, “Diagnosing Lear”, explains that one should not try to medically diagnose Lear because doing that would mean losing the point Shakespeare was trying to make. Other than that, it is impossible to correctly medically diagnose him because he does not even exist-- what Shakespeare portrays by utilizing him is important. The writer relates the characters to real world thoughts and shows how the characters are found in all of us even today. He argues that Lear is not mad from old age or anything like that, it is his circumstances brought on by other characters that drive him to madness. First of all, Daniel explains how Edmund is an evil character and one of those factors. Edmund believes his origin of birth is irrelevant and should not decide how he is treated. However, he feels that he his treated wrongly and “grants himself permission to behave any way he likes because this wrong has been done to him”. “By Nature”, Edmund is unconstrained by society, and he won’t allow it to morally refine him—he will do whatever it takes to reach his desires. He deceived both his father and brother and even ordered the hanging of Cordelia—all done with a mask of lies. The writer makes a similar argument for Lear’s daughters, Goneril and Regan. Both daughters are cunning, “fully understanding what is at stake, adept at flattery and exaggeration”, and lying in order to each get their share of Lear’s kingdom. Lear believes what they say. Daniels asserts that we “favor the explicit, not the implicit…the spoken rather than the unspoken”. Cordelia loved Lear only as a father, and this angered him. What she says is utterly true and moral, so then Lear goes on a “journey” as a result of failing to understand what she meant and why moral judgment is needed. The writer used many personal anecdotes in order to provide further examples on how Shakespeare’s characters still exist today. His tone is scholarly.
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Hope
6/4/2014 07:46:01 pm
Green, Andrew. "King Lear and the problem of the word: how far is the word to be relied on in the deceitful world Shakespeare creates in King Lear? Andrew Green explores the play's treatment of the relationship between language and truth." The English Review Feb. 2002: 6+. Gale Power Search. Web. 7 Apr. 2012.
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Buse D.
6/5/2014 07:10:23 pm
Green, Andrew. "King Lear and the problem of the word: how far is the word to be relied on in the deceitful world Shakespeare creates in King Lear? Andrew Green explores the play's treatment of the relationship between language and truth." The English Review Feb. 2002: 6+. Gale Power Search. Web. 7 Apr. 2012.
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Ryan M
6/5/2014 07:27:44 pm
Andrew begins his argument by stating the importance of words in King Lear by using a quote that states “The weight of this sad time we must obey, speak what we feel, not what we ought to say”In the play there is a gap between the truth and what is actually said. In the first act, Andrews states that the daughters are “forced to speak their love for him.” Goneril and Regan both successfully use language to manipulate Lear and clearly, their words are not sincere. Actually the words that Regan and Gonderil uses are the exact opposite of sincere. “Words can never bear the true weight of love”, in which Cordelia shows her love to King Lear towards the in of the Act. You can also see the Lear is unpredictable which is in part Lear’s because Lear doesn't want to hear the truth, all he wants is to hear what will make him happy.
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Sarah P
6/9/2014 02:20:58 am
In Alan Papprill's essay "The Stoic Universe of King Lear" they discuss the effect of time, politics, and societal norms, and issues to influence the interpretations of Shakespeare's "King Lear". Papprill also adds on that we carry a different philisophical view into the play, and that in Elizabethan times the philisophical view was of Fatal Stoicism. Fatal Stoicism, as explained by Papprill, is the idea that "what can happen may happen" (Papprill 1). Which Papprill explains that 21st century students have a difficult time comprehending since death is not an immediate threat, thus they cannot understand the meaning of death that Elizabethan people possesed. Papprill then goes on to explain that most people in Elizabethan Ebgland did not live past 30 and if they did they could expect to live to 60, meanign that Lear was most likely a 60 year old and his duaghters, along with Edmund and Edgar, are of marriageable age or 20. Then Kent being 48 also knows that his death is near due o his old age. With this understanding of ones mortality people during this time, according to Papprill, often meditated on their death and felt that it was better to die a good death rather than to lead a good life. But in the play Lear disregards the fact that life is a roulette wheel and tosses his "ball" in for chance and by not impeding the warning of the Fool and Kent his fate is set for failure and demise, and that as Papprill describes Kent acts as Lears guide and Cordelia as an honest man to Lear giving them true opinion and guidance. Which Papprill says that both Kent and Cordelia display courage, honesty, courage and loyalty to their master. Papprill then concludes by saying that death is not an agonous thing we feel but rather a thing that is sometimes welcomed as true fate and destiny for ones self and that a good death is better than a long life.
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6/9/2014 07:13:58 pm
Green, Andrew. "King Lear and the problem of the word: how far is the word to be relied on in the deceitful world Shakespeare creates in King Lear? Andrew Green explores the play's treatment of the relationship between language and truth." The English Review Feb. 2002: 6+. Gale Power Search. Web. 7 Apr. 2012.
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Alyssa
6/15/2014 11:15:01 pm
Daniels, Anthony. Diagnosing Lear. The New Criterion. June 2007. 1-6.
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