Succeeding King Lear: Literature, Exposure, & the Possibility of Politics by Emily Sun

Abstract

Emily Sun. Succeeding King Lear: Literature, Exposure, & Possibility of Politics. New York: Fordham University Press, 2010. Pp. 180. $50. Critics have long obsessed over whether Wordsworth's poetry may best be understood through idiom of division or addition, loss or gain. And while idea of poetry as an additive (a tonic or other form of recompense that reconstitutes wholeness) persists in haunting question, it is division (from self, other, and world) that has defined value of poet's life and works in aesthetic, political, and ethical registers over past several decades. notable contribution of Emily Sun's Succeeding King Lear: Literature, Exposure, & Possibility of Politics is that it implicitly argues for figure of addition as definitive Wordsworthian topos while simultaneously making rich use of and indeed contributing to critical legacy that would seem to have foreclosed this line of thought. twin peaks of Wordsworth's poetic inheritance, Shakespeare and Milton, are themselves powerfully associated with topos of division, and Sun's book puts Wordsworth's writing into active dialogue with Shakespeare's King Lear (Know that we have divided in three / Our kingdom). Nevertheless, Sun's book prioritizes addition. central term of this study is succession, which Sun defines against grain of its own etymology, and persuasively so, as literary and political that puts sovereign power into state of indefinite crisis. Sun's concept of succeeding is both additive and transformative, working against idea that succession automatically serves fundamental conservatism of traditional sovereign power, in which there is continuous transmission of power that in turn serves to maintain it. Sun reinforces idea of successive politics of transformation in very structure of her book. After short introduction, Part I offers one very long chapter on Shakespeare's King Lear, in which Sun establishes play as paradigmatic in its representation of sovereignty as politics of exposure. Part 2 consists of two short chapters on Wordsworth, one devoted to concept of autobiography and reading of Borderers and other to concept of indifference and reading of The Discharged Soldier episode of Prelude. And Part 3 consists of one medium-length chapter that reads multi-media work Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans that was first published in 1941. extraordinary historical sweep of this book and its unequal parts could initially cause skepticism in readers either for its unconventionality or seeming randomness of design. Quickly enough it becomes clear that book's form is highly controlled and contributes to its force of inquiry into relationship of literature and politics. Sun's theory of succession enables her ingeniously to weave together readings of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Agee & Evans, with King Lear serving as ground for practice of affiliation that complicates traditional genealogical framework of literary historiography (3) and inspiring creative generation of new artistic genres and modes (3) in historical periods of 1790s and 1940s respectively. Sun establishes her archive by exploring direct references to King Lear in Wordsworth's Borderers and Agee & Evans's Now Let Us Praise Famous Men, references which center on heath as spatial figure that becomes rhetorical commonplace. In King Lear heath is place of exile that reinforces idea of political sovereignty: a site of exposure, barren inhospitable place that, in juridical-political terms, is non-place between sovereign jurisdictions of England and Scotland (106). In turn, heath becomes ground for Sun's theorization of the common in Wordsworth's poetry (that will extend to work of Agee & Evans), which she defines as place, or theater, of non-hierarchical literary succession. …