King Lear, sovereign office, and doctrines of identity

Download Statistics

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

Thom, Alexander Douglas (2020). King Lear, sovereign office, and doctrines of identity. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

Preview

Thom2020PhD.pdf
Text - Accepted Version
Available under License All rights reserved.
Download (2MB) | Preview

Abstract

King Lear is premised on a split in the office of sovereignty: between the title of king and the duties, potencies, and properties of that office. This disconnection, and the political and ethical crises that emerge from it, dramatises the conceptual faultlines that run through office, duty, and identity. Responding to the philosophy of Giorgio Agamben, this thesis contends that King Lear is preoccupied by the fraught intersections between self and politics. Kingship itself was doctrinally articulated as an office that mystically subordinates, or even obliterates, the selfhood of its holder. Finding himself beyond this office, Lear’s subsequent tribulations can thus be read as a drama of self-recovery and, therefore, as a philosophical drama in its truest sense. Alongside Lear’s personal trajectory, this thesis examines the play’s wider depiction of doctrinal identities — the legitimate and illegitimate, the officer and the outlaw, masculinity and femininity — and contends that these frameworks for understanding self and other can constrain, and occasionally foreclose, more ethically responsible selfhoods. Lear earns the audience’s forgiveness partly by articulating a philosophical vision for a better life, one which transcends such political roles; and the play’s tragic climax generates much of its force by then terminating that possibility.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):