Abstract
This paper analyses William Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear through the theory of Ecocriticism and seeks to understand Ecophobia—the fear of Nature. Lear's act of reducing Nature to an object through which he is deriving natural resources stems from his deep-seated animosity with the idea of women as independent entities. His feud with Cordelia and inability to see through the evil mechanisms of Goneril and Regan can be attributed to his unwillingness to surrender control of the land and to Nature. His failure to accept Cordelia's refusal to partake in his structure of power and authority can be read as his phallic anxiety in surrendering to Nature and women.
Highlights
An Ecocritical study of King Lear has a twin fold effect by arming Shakespearean studies with the environment's vocabulary and providing a way to move beyond symbolic and thematic readings concerning Nature's representation in the play
Ecocriticism takes the natural world as an essential entity rather than just a thematic study
Nature and women are both seen as agents who on attaining free will could pose a threat to misogynistic Lear as evident in his refusal to accept Cordelia's "nothing." Both Nature and women are portrayed in extreme terms of saint and demon, silent and noisy, with almost little to no space for neutrality in between
Summary
Introduction An Ecocritical study of King Lear has a twin fold effect by arming Shakespearean studies with the environment's vocabulary and providing a way to move beyond symbolic and thematic readings concerning Nature's representation in the play. The world was getting smaller, predictable, and something that could be mapped, and this resulted in changed social relations, which constructed new ideas about space.
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