King Lear | Themes

Since it was first staged and published in the early seventeenth century, Shakespeare's King Lear has been the subject of extensive literary interpretation and the object of intense critical debate. The key issue here is whether King Lear is a classical tragedy with a redemptive moral or a radical departure from genre conventions, a play with a profoundly pessimistic, even nihilistic, view of man and the world he briefly inhabits. At the center of the division between the traditional and the modern readings of Shakespeare's Lear is the subject and theme of nature,...

[The entire page is 1441 words long]

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

Summary and Analysis – Themes – Characters – And much more...