Thom, A. orcid.org/0000-0001-5280-4105 (2024) The Majesty of Kingship: Spectacular and Sacred Sovereign Power. In: Office and Duty in King Lear: Shakespeare’s Political Theologies. Palgrave Shakespeare Studies . Palgrave Macmillan , pp. 25-75. ISBN 9783031401565
Abstract
To analyse office in Lear, I begin with the most spectacular: kingship. Lear’s initial entrance, speech acts, and exclusions display his sovereign power. Yet he formally detaches those sovereign powers from the ‘name’ of ‘king’, relegating himself to merely nominal kingship (1.1.137). This ‘gift’ is criticised not just on technical, pragmatic grounds but as a moral ‘evil’ (1.1.165, 167). This reflects the sacred quality of sovereign kingship. European intellectual discourse posited an analogy between the king and Christ, which produced the iconic Tudor doctrine of the King’s Two Bodies. Both this and proto-republican contractualism demonstrate kingship’s cipher-like, instrumental quality. The jurisprudential concept of majesty binds together law, religion, metaphysics, and physiognomy into a spectacular sovereign sanctity. Yet, ‘majesty’ is precisely one of the qualities that Lear conveys to Cornwall and Albany. Troubling questions—given treason’s legal definition as crimen lesae majestatis (lit. the crime of injuring majesty)—therefore emerge about Gloucester’s blinding. Dispensing with every duty, power, and right of his office, Lear’s title of ‘king’ becomes a vestigial term of address that advertises his negation. From this perspective, Agamben’s hidden affinity between the banished and the ex-sovereign becomes legible.
Metadata
Item Type: | Book Section |
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Authors/Creators: | |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of English (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 13 Dec 2024 14:28 |
Last Modified: | 13 Dec 2024 14:32 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Palgrave Macmillan |
Series Name: | Palgrave Shakespeare Studies |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/978-3-031-40157-2_2 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:220766 |