King Lear and the naked truth
Subtitle: rethinking the language of religion and resistance
By: Judy Kronenfeld.
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Durham
Language: eng
Number of pages: 383
Subjects: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616.; English language -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- Semantics.; Lear, King (Legendary character), in literature.; Christianity and literature -- England -- History.; Literature and history -- England -- History.; Language and culture -- England -- History.; Dissenters, Religious, in literature.; Social ethics in literature.; Religion in literature.; Clothing and dress in literature.; Nudity in literature.
Description: Taking King Lear as her central text, Judy Kronenfeld questions the critical assumptions of much of today's most fashionable Shakespeare scholarship. Charting a new course beyond both New Historicist and deconstructionist critics, she suggests a theory of language and interpretation that provides essential historical and linguistic contexts for the key terms and concepts of the play.

Opening the play up to the implications of these contexts and this interpretive theory, she reveals much about Lear, English Reformation religious culture, and the state of contemporary criticism.

Kronenfeld's focus expands from the text of Shakespeare's play to a discussion of a shared Christian culture - a shared language and set of values - a common discursive field that frames the social ethics of the play. That expanded focus is used to address the multiple ways that clothing and nakedness function in the play, as well as the ways that these particular images and terms are understood in that shared context.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [343]-365) and index.