The King & the Adulteress: A Psychoanalytical and Literary Reinterpretation of Madame Bovary and King LearDuke University Press, 1998 - 162 pages The King and the Adulteress brings together two essays that propose radically revisionary readings of two of the most important literary works in the Western canon, Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Shakespeare's King Lear. In offering a new understanding of a deeply sadomasochistic relationship and of an authoritarian pathology, renowned psychoanalyst Roberto Speziale-Bagliacca combines psychoanalysis with literary studies to challenge the conventional judgments of readers and the stereotyped interpretations of literary critics to these masterpieces. Approaching the characters in Bovary and Lear from both an analytic and a critical viewpoint, Speziale-Bagliacca reinterprets many issues and events that involve archetypal figures of modern literary mythology. In fact, he reverses much of the received opinion about them. Charles Bovary, for example, far from being a victim of his wife's neurotic restlessness or the epitome of a passive imbecile, is a masochist of the highest order who makes a decisive contribution to Emma's miserable end. Lear, rather than a tragedy involving the sweet Cordelia, noble Kent, and the Fool as good and loyal supporters of an old king driven to madness by his overbearing evil daughters, is precisely the opposite. The sympathetic understanding of the reader should go, Speziale-Bagliacca suggests, also to Regan, Goneril, and Edmund, while the king, whose crisis is interpreted in the light of psychoanalytic findings on depression, finally becomes the true unbeloved "bastard" of the play. Roberto Speziale-Bagliacca is a psychoanalyst and Professor of Psychotherapy at the Medical School of the University of Genoa. He is the author of On the Shoulders of Freud and many other works. |
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accept anxiety attempt avait behavior blind Bouilhet Bouvard et Pécuchet Bovary's bovarysme breast c'est characters Charles and Emma Charles Bovary Charles's child Colin Rice conflict Cordelia Cornwall Correspondance critics daughters deny depression devour edition elle Emma's essay everything eyes face fantasies father feel femme figure Fool Frank Kermode Freud give Gloucester Goneril and Regan guilt Gustave Flaubert Gustave's Homais husband hypothesis imbecile interpretation J'ai Kent Kent's King Lear king's L'Idiot Lear's Léon letter look Louis Bouilhet Louise Colet lovers Madame Bovary madness masochism masochist means melancholy mère mother ness never novel Oeuvres Oswald Padri e figli Paris pauvre perhaps personality phallic play psychoanalysis qu'il quoted rage relationship Rodolphe sadomasochistic Sartre scene seems sense Shakespeare shows sisters sort speak Speziale-Bagliacca stereotypes suffer suggested tells Theodor Reik thou thought tion tout tragedy uncon unconscious understand wants wife William Bedell Stanford wish woman words