King Lear: A Play Where Various Ideologies Meet

King Lear, one of Shakespeare's most famous tragedies, has been interpreted from a conservative and unhistorical criticism for much of the twentieth century. For example, A.C. Bradley, in his highly influential book Shakespearean Tragedy, presents the play as a Christian parable of sacrifice and salvation. However, other critics such as William Elton interpret it from the point of view of secular humanism. He discovers a strong sense of affirmation, not in Lear's spiritual renewal, but in his heroic endurance on earth. But this thesis tries to interpret the play from a different angle: Cultural Materialism (a branch of New Historicism developed in England since 1980s), which reinserts the play into the cultural history of Shakespeare's own time by merging them back into the context of the circulating discourses.With detailed analysis, the thesis argues that King Lear intervened in contemporary history in the very act of representing it and this can be shown in three aspects of historical and cultural process: consolidation, subversion and containment. Additionally, the thesis regards the Renaissance as a boundary space between two more monolithic periods: the Middle Ages and the modern society. Acted out in such a boundary space were a clash of paradigms and ideologies, a self-reflexivity, and a self-consciousness about the human identity, which resonate with some of the dominant elements of postmodern culture. Therefore, it tries to make King Lear intelligible by narratives of rupture, tension, and contradictions concerning three ideological and historical aspects: King's Divinity, Patriarchy, and King James' Project for Union. It points out that various voices of ideologies such as Feudal Patriarchy, Individualism, Utopian Idealism and Existentialism are competing for being heard in King Lear.This thesis is divided into four chapters: Chapter One gives a brief introduction of conventional Christian and secular Humanist interpretations of King Lear and emphasizes the Cultural Materialist view of the thesis. Chapter Two introduces New Historicism and its two branches, and focuses on the Cultural Materialists' view of theRenaissance and the relationship between literature and history. Chapter Three gives a detailed analysis of competing ideologies in King Lear. Chapter Four makes a conclusion by reviewing the main points in the thesis.Finally, it is worth noting that these judgments made in the thesis can also finally recognize its root in our own time, because it reflects our own sense of the exhilaration and fearfulness of living inside a gap in history, when the paradigms that structured the past seem superficial and new paradigms uncertain.