King Lear and A Thousand Acres

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King Lear and A Thousand Acres
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The Anxiety of Influence

• A critical work by Harold Bloom published in
  1973.
• His central thesis proposed that writers are
  often troubled by the extent to which their work
  is influenced by other writers.
• To be a writer of true longevity, ones work must
  original.
• Bloom studied writers from the past whom he felt
  were truly original to see how they dealt with
  this anxiety of influence in their work.

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The Anxiety of Influence

• Clinamen - A "swerve" away from the precursor a
  corrective movement in a later work, with all the
  implication that the precursor was correct up to
  a point, and the new text carries on with the
  corrections.
• Tessera - "completion and antithesis. The making
  of a new text from a small fragment of the
  original.
• The four other anxieties Kenosis, Daemonization,
  Askesis, and Aprophrades

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King Lear

• 1605 A.D.
• Set in 8th century B.C.
• Tragedy centering on downfall of a dysfunctional
  family
• Echoes of a morality play stock figures who
  represent both good and evil
• Foils in Gloucester and Lear as father figures

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King Lear

• King Lear dramatizes the tragic discovery that
  the traditional structures of societymarked by
  codes of deferencecannot hold the social group
  together, either at the level of the family or at
  the level of the state.
• The plot of the play depends on competition the
  competition set up by Lears love contest the
  competition of the illegitimate son with the
  legitimate.

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King Lear

• Imagery
• -- Insults
• --Foul fiend, madness
• --Swearing by Gods
• --Astrology

• Motifs
• Seeing
• Judging
• Flattery
• the worst
• unaccomodated man
• Patience
• nothing

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King Lear Theme Topics

• Parent/child relationship
• Flattery
• Madness
• Judgment
• Appearance vs. reality
• Christian Humanist vs. Machiavellian

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A Brief Look at Postmodernism

• Rejection of Western values and
• beliefs as only a small part of the
• human experience.
• Suspicion of being "profound"
• because such ideas are based on one
• particular value systems.
• Preference for the exterior image and
• avoidance drawing conclusions or
• suggesting underlying meanings.
• Sees human experience as unstable, internally
  contradictory, ambiguous, inconclusive,
  indeterminate, unfinished, fragmented,
  discontinuous, "jagged," with no one specific
  reality possible. 
• Creates an "open" work in which the reader must
  supply his own connections, work out alternative
  meanings, and provide his own (unguided)
  interpretation.
• Feminism, ecocriticism, queer studies,
  multi-cultural studies

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Postmodernism
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Postmodernism