The Politics of Old Age in Shakespeare's King Lear.
The notion of an archetypal struggle between "the young" and "the old" has dominated the critical discussion of Lear's age in Shakespeare's tragedy. This essay argues instead that such trans-historical binary constructions have obscured how King Lear presents Lear's age as a contested space subject...
| Publicado en: | Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies Vol. 18; no. 1; pp. 1 - 29 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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University of Pennsylvania Press
Winter2018
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=133144292&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 133144292 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 15310485 DBLW jtl: Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies issn: 15310485 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Winter2018 vid: 18 iid: 1 pid: 4636 pub: University of Pennsylvania Press artinfo: ui: 133144292 10.1353/jem.2018.0000 ppf: 1 ppct: 28 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 1.5MB tig: atl: The Politics of Old Age in Shakespeare's King Lear. aug: au: HARKINS, MATTHEW su: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 Lear, King of England (Legendary character) Power (Social sciences) Cultural identity Social conflict sug: subj: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 Lear, King of England (Legendary character) Power (Social sciences) Cultural identity Social conflict ab: The notion of an archetypal struggle between "the young" and "the old" has dominated the critical discussion of Lear's age in Shakespeare's tragedy. This essay argues instead that such trans-historical binary constructions have obscured how King Lear presents Lear's age as a contested space subject to specific, conflicting cultural definitions. Disparate representations of the life cycle, evident in early modern taxonomies of age, give Goneril and Regan the tools to recast Lear as a man in his second childhood or dotage, and thus to deny him the still powerful role he seeks to adopt as a figure in his "green old age." This framing of Lear and other older men in the play shows how an old man's physical decay might become a political fact before it was a biological one. The essay claims that King Lear-along with a handful of other plays by Shakespeare from the late 1590s to the early 1600s-reveals how vulnerable patriarchal authority could be in early modern England when older men were defined and classified in ways that disempowered them. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies is the property of University of Pennsylvania Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies holder: University of Pennsylvania Press dt: @attributes: year: 2018 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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