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Avoidance as love : Evading Cavell on Dover Cliff
Luke, Nicholas
Luke, Nicholas
Author
Abstract
[Extract] This essay raises a ghostly counterpoint to Stanley Cavell’s influential reading of King Lear (ca. 1605) in the form of the discontinuous, fragmentary, at times almost inhuman character of Edgar.1 Cavell’s achievement in “The Avoidance of Love” is to show how cruelty in the play is bound up with a shame-filled desire “to avoid being recognized.”2 What Lear avoids is not just the “other” in all its inherent uncertainty—its eyes, its desire, its love—but also himself, or at least the vulnerable, open self that is capable of love. Cavell sees Edgar as an inveterate avoider.
Keywords
Date
2020
Type
Journal article
Journal
Modern Philology: Critical and Historical studies in postclassical literature
Book
Volume
117
Issue
4
Page Range
445-469
Article Number
ACU Department
Collections
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DOI
Source URL
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Open Access Status
License
All rights reserved
File Access
Controlled