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What is your response to the Marxist reading of Shakespeare's King Lear?

Date Submitted: 10/14/2004 19:57:33
Length: 5 pages (1301 words)
Views: 103934

King Lear, when read from a Marxist perspective, blames everything on the conflict of classes. In particular, there is a focus on the traditional feudalism versus the "new" capitalism. Lear is viewed as a hero because he manages to journey from being a mentally impoverished king to a simple man, while Cordelia is the heroine. The villains of this story are not clear-cut, crude villains but complex villains with more logic and commonsense the conventionalists. …

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…with King Lear such as the conflict between groups and Cordelia's heroinism. However, it often overlooks parts of the play such as Edmond's bitterness about his illegitimacy and the way he has been treated despite the events being beyond his control and instead making the characters shallow and two-dimensional, only existing for the greedy pursuit of power. Evidently, this reductive analysis makes many sweeping statements about the play, some of which are not totally justified.

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