Speaker
Description
This paper examines Shakespeare's King Lear as a drama of ecological and cosmological crisis, arguing that the tragedy’s emotional and political devastation stems not only from filial conflict but from the collapse of early modern assumptions about human exceptionalism. In a period when the Great Chain of Being and theories of climatic influence shaped understandings of identity, authority, and the body, emerging ecological thought increasingly exposed human beings as permeable, vulnerable, and inseparable from natural forces. King Lear stages this shift with striking intensity: Lear’s loss of land and title reveals the brittleness of kingship as a cultural construct, while the storm scene dramatizes the shattering of the cosmological order that once guaranteed his authority. Both Lear and Gloucester experience ecophobia when the environment refuses to reflect or validate human hierarchies. Their suffering thus becomes symptomatic of a wider epistemic rupture in which political power, paternal identity, and the anthropocentric worldview collapse simultaneously. By situating Shakespeare’s tragedy within early modern ecological discourse, this study shows that King Lear anticipates modern concerns about environmental crisis, sustainability, and the fragility of social structures in the face of ecological disruption.
| Keywords | ecophobia, early modern cosmology, environmental crisis, anthropocentrism, King Lear |
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| brlhri@gmail.com |