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psychoanalytical king lear? (1 Viewer)

skankit

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is anyone using a psychoanalytical reading of king lear?
ive written my reading, but im having trouble applying it to the "chaos and order" question...

like how does a psychoanalytical reading represent the struggle between chaos and order?

:eek:
 

ujuphleg

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chaos and order in the mind -- mental disorders etc.

external reflection of the internal mind -- the storm etc.
 

TheKey

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yeh i remember using the psychoanalytical perspective to do the storm scene, so basically what 'ujuphleg' said, u talk about the storm and its symbolic value.

My tip would be to talk about:

1. how the storm represents Lears inner turmoil, as well as the chaos of the kingdom.
2. the shedding of Lears clothes-> marks his self realisation of the truth, its significance being that Lear was only able to see the truth AFTER he was stripped of his royal pretence, represented through his clothes. (its good to mention here that in shakespeares time, your clothes symbolised who you are...)hence being naked, made Lear think as just another man and not a king... you could also use biblical allusions in this scene...

i would also recommend you dont only use 1 perspective in ur essay, mix it up.

i used marxist, psychoanalytical and feminist perspective.

Begning, Marxist reading, you can say that it all went wrong when the king offered land in EXCHANGE for flattery..hence here he took the role of a tradesmen, and cordelias 'nothing' or 'no thing' was her way of rejecting the pragmatism and inturn the bourgeoisie ideals, holding onto her royal values of honour and loyalty...While the other 2 sisters see their chance and embrace these bourgeoisie ideals, expressing it in their pragmatic dialogue "rich", "worth"... this then can be summed up as the trigger which started the Chaos, (the acceptance of bourgeoisie values) and u can say shakespeare could see this coming and his play was a prophecy of the english civil war which was to come(parliament vs the monarchy).

feminism is a really good one to use while talking about productions, even if u didnt see any u can say that the euphony of Cordelias name expresses her femininity and then make up stuff about her clothes, eg say its white because the colour shows her as being innocent, without pretence, as opposed to the cacophony of Goberil and Reagen, whose harsh sounding names and later on their actions are that typical of a man.

interesting thing here is that Chaos is induced by the partiachial society, showing that the absence of a queen caused the Chaos, and hence Lears death ends the Chaos and the Order is restored.
 
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