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. |
From inside the book
Results 1-3 of 14
Page 100
... reason and suggests to Lear that he is like the stupid sparrow who rears a cuckoo : The hedge - sparrow fed the cuckoo so long , That it's had it head bit off by it young . . ( 1.4.198-99 ) ... It is as if he were saying : Why try to reason ...
... reason and suggests to Lear that he is like the stupid sparrow who rears a cuckoo : The hedge - sparrow fed the cuckoo so long , That it's had it head bit off by it young . . ( 1.4.198-99 ) ... It is as if he were saying : Why try to reason ...
Page 114
... reason when Lear , who is thrown off balance by Cordelia's unexpected " Nothing " and suffers an anxiety crisis , loses his reason and is therefore in need of soothing words , inviting breasts , and calming milk . Critical unawareness ...
... reason when Lear , who is thrown off balance by Cordelia's unexpected " Nothing " and suffers an anxiety crisis , loses his reason and is therefore in need of soothing words , inviting breasts , and calming milk . Critical unawareness ...
Page 117
... reason to do so . Kent's secret design - secret for him , too , being perhaps an unconscious design - is most probably to replace the three daughters in the king's affections , with the whole plan culminat- ing in a great scene of ...
... reason to do so . Kent's secret design - secret for him , too , being perhaps an unconscious design - is most probably to replace the three daughters in the king's affections , with the whole plan culminat- ing in a great scene of ...
Contents
A Wholly Fictitious Story | 54 |
An Essay on King Lear | 81 |
The Barbarous Scythian | 106 |
Copyright | |
3 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
able accept According affection already appears attempt become beginning behavior believe blind caused characters Charles Charles's child comes consider continue Cordelia Correspondance critics dans daughters deny describes edition elle Emma Emma's essay everything expression eyes face fact father feel figure Flaubert Fool further give given Goneril guilt Gustave husband idea imagination interest interpretation keep Kent King Lear Lear's least leaves Léon letter look Madame Bovary means mind mother nature never novel offer once Paris perhaps personality play poor possible Press probably quoted reason reference Regan relationship Rodolphe scene seems seen sense Shakespeare shows sisters sort speak suffer suggested tells term Theodor Reik things thou thought tion tragedy true turns unconscious understand wants wife wish woman writes