Date of Award

2014

Document Type

Thesis

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Bachelor of Art in English- Writing

First Advisor

Matthew Fike

Abstract

In Lear’s division of the kingdom, the essential warning of contemporary Gestalt Theory resonates clearly: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. As Lear divides his kingdom (his political body) into thirds, he divides his physical body—or more accurately, his own wit as noted by the Fool in I.iv—into a series of fragments that will never again be powerful or whole. The parallel construct of Lear’s physical body and his body politic has important implications when considered alongside the theories of the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, especially Lacan’s theory that the self is developed as a fragmentation. Lear represents what Lacan calls the Symbolic Order, the Signifying1 entity that establishes the identity of subjectivity through language. Yet Lear is also the signified subject in the larger entity of the body politic; the title of “King” is precisely what alienates him. Language betrays Lear in the play as he unknowingly wields it as a self-destructive tool, and the Symbolic Order loses its ability to impose Signification.

Comments

Essay won the Frederic Fadner Critical Essay Award for the best essay in the 2014 volume of Sigma Tau Delta Review

Also awarded the prestigious Senior Scholarship awarded by Sigma Tau Delta International English Honor Society