WHAT ARE YOU READING?

2009 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 337-340
Author(s):  
Peter Holland
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Annual Meeting ◽  
King Lear ◽  
The Real ◽  
A Chain ◽  
Book Display

It's Easter and, two years out of three, that means it is also the annual meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America, this time at the appropriately named Renaissance Hotel (in the absence of a chain of Early Modern Hotels) in Washington, D.C. Never mind about the plenaries and panels and seminars, many of which were outstanding; all conferencegoers, whether Shakespeareans or not, know that the real excitement is to be found at the book display. Was this what King Lear was talking about when he suggested to Cordelia they would spend time in prison talking about “Who loses and who wins, who's in, who's out”? And the unseemly scenes on the last morning, when many publishers reduce their prices rather than ship the books back to the warehouse, are remarkably reminiscent of Harrods's china department on the first day of the sales.

King Lear and its Origins

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kerrigan
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
King Lear ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Desire For Death ◽  
History Play ◽  
Oedipus At Colonus

The agreed, major sources of King Lear are the anonymous history play King Leir and Sidney’s Arcadia. To these and other early modern ‘originals’ this chapter adds classical tragedies by Seneca, Euripides, and Sophocles—most conspicuously his Oedipus at Colonus, which was readily available in Latin translation. The ancient tragedies resonate with King Lear thanks to conventions of literary imitation that were well understood in the Jacobean period, but their presence is also symptomatic of a drive within the play to get back to the origins of nature, injustice, and causation. The influences of Plutarch and Montaigne are also highlighted. The portrayal of death (or the illusion of it) and the desire for death, in the play and its sources, are analysed. Focusing on the scenes at Dover Cliff and the division of the kingdom/s, this chapter moves to a new account of the complications of the play’s conclusion in both quarto and Folio texts.

Politeness theory and Shakespeare's four major tragedies

1989 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Brown ◽  
Albert Gilman
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Speech Act Theory ◽  
King Lear ◽  
Politeness Theory ◽  
Inner Life ◽  
Period 2 ◽  
Colloquial Speech ◽  
Theory Of Literature

ABSTRACTPenelope Brown and Stephen Levinson (1987) have proposed that power (P), distance (D), and the ranked extremity (R) of a face-threatening act are the universal determinants of politeness levels in dyadic discourse. This claim is tested here for Shakespeare's use of Early Modern English in Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello. The tragedies are used because: (1) dramatic texts provide the best information on colloquial speech of the period; (2) the psychological soliloquies in the tragedies provide the access to inner life that is necessary for a proper test of politeness theory; and (3) the tragedies represent the full range of society in a period of high relevance to politeness theory. The four plays are systematically searched for pairs of minimally contrasting dyads where the dimensions of contrast are power (P), distance (D), and intrinsic extremity (R). Whenever such a pair is found, there are two speeches to be scored for politeness and a prediction from theory as to which should be more polite. The results for P and for R are those predicted by theory, but the results for D are not. The two components of D, interactive closeness and affect, are not closely associated in the plays. Affect strongly influences politeness (increased liking increases politeness and decreased liking decreases politeness); interactive closeness has little or no effect on politeness. The uses of politeness for the delineation of character in the tragedies are illustrated. (Politeness theory, speech act theory, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, theory of literature, Shakespeare studies)

scholarly journals "Unaccomodated Man": Dismodernism and Disability Justice in King Lear

2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine M. Gottlieb
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
King Lear ◽  
Significant Disability ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Important Site

King Lear's exploration of what it means to be human has significant Disability Studies implications that have not yet been examined. Through the course of the play, Lear gains awareness of interdependence, bodily vulnerability, and human-animal kinship, and his new worldview unsettles the shared ground of ableism and anthropocentrism. Analyzing three of Lear's significant speeches, I argue that King Lear's exploration of what it means to be human anticipates Lennard Davis's recent theoretical concept, dismodernism. Both Lear and Gloucester express concern for Poor Tom in ways that link disability to community and social justice. Through considering King Lear in relation to early modern contexts and current Disability Studies theory and activism, I argue that the play is an important site for developing a socially conscious Shakespearean Disability Studies.

The I/Eye of the Storm: Prospero’s Tempest

2019 ◽  
pp. 217-255
Author(s):  
Sophie Chiari
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Travel Narratives ◽  
Ecological Significance ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Tempest ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Celestial Sphere

The Tempest (1611) is a play often quoted for its ecological significance: indeed, it is one in which Shakespeare once again addresses the question of climate and the four elements in his revisiting of the early modern travel narratives (in which, incidentally, the motif of the fiery ocean was a topos of the genre). In this rewriting of Virgil’s Aeneid not entirely devoid of Homeric reminiscences, the playwright returns to the initial questions of the Dream: can men and women rule the elements? If we trigger off a climatic disorder, can it be mended? And if we lose control, what may then ensue? The playwright thus reassesses the role of man’s ‘potent art’ (5.1.50) in the ordering of nature. Chapter 7 explores the idea of temperance in connection with that of temperate clime, and it shows that Prospero’s tempest, meant both as a form of revenge against Antonio and as a means of catharsis and rebirth, is deeply problematic as it oscillates between the illusory and the real, magic and science, the sublime and the mundane. Providing us with kaleidoscopic views, the play cogently explores the power of the elements and reaffirms that, for Shakespeare, what appears in the celestial sphere cannot be dissociated from what happens on earth.

British Medical Association Annual Meeting, Cambridge, 1880

1880 ◽  
Vol 26 (115) ◽  
pp. 460-471
Author(s):  
J. C. Browne ◽  
Dees ◽  
Bacon
Keyword(s):  
Medical Association ◽  
Annual Meeting ◽  
British Medical Association ◽  
The West ◽  
Apparent Increase ◽  
The Real

It is impossible to do justice to the President's Address by a short abstract, Its most important feature is, that it fully recognises the real as well as the apparent increase of insanity and allied nervous disorders amongst us. The former position was maintained some years ago by Dr. C. Browne, when he endeavoured to show that the usual explanations brought forward to account for the numerical increase were falsified by the experience of the West Riding Asylum, of which he was at that time the Superintendent.

Recent Work in Renaissance Studies: Psychology Did Madness Have a Renaissance

1991 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 776-791 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Thomas Neely
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Annual Meeting ◽  
Plenary Session ◽  
Current Work ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
Renaissance Studies

All the terms in the title of the plenary session, “Recent Work in Renaissance Studies on Psychology,” at the Renaissance Society of America's 1991 annual meeting (where this paper was first delivered) are matters of conflict and debate. In this discussion I shall examine current debates about the “Renaissance,” “psychology,” and “madness” to account for the paucity and insufficiency of current work on early modern madness by historians and literary critics and theorists, to raise issues about current trends in Renaissance studies, and to elicit new kinds of scholarship.

Anniversary Address

1935 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Frederic Kenyon
Keyword(s):  
Annual Meeting ◽  
First Year ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Republic ◽  
First Time ◽  
Special Responsibility

In addressing the Society at an Annual Meeting from this chair for the first time, I must at once express my obligations to the Fellows for the honour they have done me, and confess my own diffidence as to their wisdom. The most gratifying honours are those to which one has no claim, and which one has no reason to expect; and therefore I can place the presidency of this Society among the most gratifying honours that have befallen me. It is not the only one that I have not deserved, but perhaps it is the most notable of them; and therefore it carries with it a special responsibility, since it must be justified, if it is to be justified at all, by its results. Of these it is too soon to speak yet. You have been very indulgent to an inexperienced President in his first year of office; you have sustained yourselves, no doubt, with the reflection that the real business of the Society was safe in the hands of very experienced officers, who would see that the republic took no harm, and that a President, after all, cannot do much mischief, provided he does not talk too much.

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