King Lear : new critical essays / edited by Jeffrey Kahan.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Kahan, Jeffrey, 1964-

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Series:

Shakespeare criticism ; v. 33.

Shakespeare criticism ; v. 33

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. King Lear.

Shakespeare, William.

Physical Description:

x, 374 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : Routledge, 2008.

Summary:

Is King Lear an autonomous text, or a rewrite of the earlier and anonymous play King Leir? Should we refer to Shakespeare's original quarto when discussing the play, the revised folio text, or the popular composite version, stitched together by Alexander Pope in 1725? What of its stage variations? When turning from page to stage, the critical view on King Lear is skewed by the fact that for almost half of the four hundred years the play has occupied the stage, audiences preferred Nahum Tate's optimistic adaptation, in which Lear and Cordelia live happily ever after. When discussing King Lear, the question of what comprises 'the play' is both complex and fragmentary.

These issues of identity and authenticity across time and across mediums are outlined, debated, and considered critically by the contributors to this volume. Using a variety of approaches, from postcolonialism and New Historicism to psychoanalysis and gender studies, the leading international contributors to King Lear: New Critical Essays offer major new interpretations of the conception and writing, editing, and cultural production of King Lear. This book is an up-to-date and comprehensive anthology of textual scholarship, performance research, and critical writing on one of Shakespeare's most important and perplexing tragedies

Contents:

Introduction : Shakespeare's King Lear / Jeffrey Kahan

The reshaping of King Lear / R.A. Foakes

The evolution of the texts of Lear / Richard Knowles

King Lear and early seventeenth-century print culture / Cyndia Susan Clegg

"The injuries that they themselves procure" : justice poetic and pragmatic, and aspects of the endplay, in King Lear / Tom Clayton

What does Shakespeare leave out of King Lear? / Jean R. Brink

The cause of thunder : nature and justice in King Lear / Paul A. Cantor

Hope and despair in King Lear : the gospel and the crisis of natural law / R.V. Young

Lear in Kierkegaard / Stanley Stewart

The smell of mortality : performing torture in King Lear 3.7 / Edward L. Rocklin

Some Lears of private life, from Tate to Shaw / Christy Desmet

If only : alternatives and the self in King Lear / Jeffrey Kahan.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780415775267

0415775264

9780203090084

020309008X

OCLC:

176861845