Title: King Lear and the naked truth
First published: 1998
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.
Subjects: Clothing and dress in literature, Nudity in literature, Literature and history, Religion in literature, Social ethics in literature, Dissenters, Religious, in literature, English language, Language and culture, Lear, King (Legendary character), in literature, Christianity and literature, Semantics, History, Semantique, Dissidents (Religion) dans la litterature, Anglais (Langue), Christendom, Histoire, Nudite dans la litterature, King Lear (Shakespeare), Naaktheid, Langage et culture, Lear, Roi (Personnage legendaire), dans la litterature, Nacktheit, Litterature et histoire, Literature, Morale sociale dans la litterature, Christianisme et litterature, Kleidung, King Lear (Shakespeare, William), In literature, Early modern, Costume dans la litterature, Shakespeare, william, 1564-1616, king lear, English language, early modern, 1500-1700, English language, semantics
Places: England
People: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Time periods: Early modern, 1500-1700
LC classification: PR2819 .K76 1998