Physis and Nomos in *King Lear*

International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Translation, 2019

The present article sought to provide a comparison between The Sophoclean Trilogy and King Lear, respectively produced by Sophocles in the 5th century BC Greece and by William Shakespeare in 1606 at the end of the Elizabethan era in Britain. The comparison was set to investigate the two playwrights' adherence to the production of a good tragedy such as the one Aristotle described in his Poetics. Another attempt was to explain how tragedy evolved during Elizabethan times and measure the extent of deviation both from Aristotle's and Sophocles' conception of some essential tragic factors relating mostly to the hero's hamartia and fall, learning and recognition, fate and free will, retribution and redemption, in addition to diction and style. As the comparison showed, some changes were, indeed, made in the tragedy of King Lear, namely at the level of form, including, among others, the division of the play into separate Acts and Scenes, the breaking of the unity of Action, the increase of the number of characters, etc. At the level of content, the changes appear to have equally touched some important issues, namely the role of fate and prophecies, the characters' flaws, in addition to the nature of the relation between family members, to mention but a few changes. At a deeper level, however, Shakespeare's tragedy mostly remained faithful to its classical heritage, namely through the punishment of the bad and the gratifying of the good. The gods were always omnipresent and ready to reestablish the status quo, restore justice and bring back prosperity and peace, though sometimes in an incomprehensible way, especially when their action was coupled with fate and bad fortune.

Agnès Lafont (ed.), <i>Coriolan</i> de William Shakespeare, an online publication, 2007

Menenius's speech on political and social order at the beginning of Shakespeare's <i>Coriolanus</i> is regularly ascribed to ancient sources like Plutarch, but the biblical origin and intertext has mostly been overlooked, if not ignored. This paper is looking at the Paulinian intertext, connecting Menenius's rhtoric with that of 1 Corinthians.

The Classical Review 65.1

Theatre Journal, 2010

International Journal of English Language and Literature Studies

Merope 74, 2021

In comparing King Lear and the Republic on the basis of their common preoccupation with the problem of justice, the present study shows Shakespeare borrowing Plato’s city-soul analogy as well as the related body-politic paradigm to explore crucial convergences between ethics and politics. Yet, while both authors employ dialectical methods to clarify philosophical questions in their respective dialogues, Shakespeare goes beyond mere verbal debate, juxtaposing the characters’ pronouncements on justice with their actions as well what happens to them during the course of King Lear to transcend the seeming absurdity of his darkest tragedy. It is thus argued that King Lear not only lends support for Socrates’ critique of imitative poetry in Book III of the Republic due to its ethical inconsistencies and emotional effect, but inversely puts to the test such fundamental Platonic notions as the philosopher-king and the privileging of philosophy over poetry in the instruction of virtue.

2017

Although often dismissed as a villain, Callicles’ views about philosophy, politics, and human nature expressed in his speech in Plato’s Gorgias criticizing Socrates turn-out to be similar to Socrates’ own thoughts about philosophy, politics, and human nature when compared to Socrates’ arguments in other dialogues such as the Republic. However, Socrates obfuscates these similarities through his use of rhetoric in the latter part of the dialogue in order to conceal a more fundamental disagreement about the priority and relationship of philosophy and politics. This similarity and obfuscation constitutes an important and overlooked teaching of Plato’s Gorgias

The causal relationship between Lear's division of the kingdom and descent into madness has divided critics for centuries. This paper aims to illuminate the inherent connection between Lear’s mental state and the state of the kingdom through an exploration of the dual nature of the term sovereignty—of mind and of state—in the play.