The Perception of Place in King Lear
This chapter traces the relationship between perception and place in King Lear. Through a reading of Gloucester’s claim to “see” the world “feelingly,” it first argues that Shakespeare’s play both theorizes and enacts a phenomenology of place in the approach to Dover cliff. There, Edgar’s efforts to deceive his father as to the nature of his surroundings work not only reveal the role of perception within the phenomenology of place; they also disrupt that phenomenology, as Edgar’s suggestion that his father’s senses betray him leaves Gloucester with no way of orientating himself within the world. Similarly, Lear’s encounter with the storm shows that the inability to feel one’s surroundings can effect a kind of displacement, leading to a profound disorientation in madness. As such, the chapter furthers the book’s inquiry into the nature of ecological thinking by shifting the emphasis to moments in which such thinking fails, as characters struggle to orient themselves within increasingly imperceptible locations.