In the topical abundance or superabundance of Shakespeares King Lear, almost all major thematic patterns, images, and symbols are linked to Lears enigmatic companion, the Fool. The Fool surpasses Shakespeares other fools when he is given a major role, yet he is more than a major figure: he is the pivot for action and interpretation. The presence and the importance of the Fool are emphasized further when almost half of Lears characters are referred to as fools. The stark, barren hinterland of Lear is shot through by the conspicuously forceful presence of folly. The fools propensity for misrule coupled with his centrality to the text results in a dramatic structure that itself breaks the rules. King Lear is the most generically puzzling play in Shakespeares corpus. Lear, a tragedy, draws upon comedy, history, romantic comedy, romance, and morality in indefinable and unparalleled ways. Just as form is juxtaposed in Lear, religious systems or identities are also contrasted. Pagan, Christian, existential, nihilistic, and moralistic interpretations are readily discernable. The fool, a potential nexus for structural questions, may also be at the heart of the question of spiritual identity. To locate the fool at the source of both structural and spiritual problems, and to discern why the fool factors so prominently especially in a play viewed as Shakespeares darkest, are the two endeavours of this thesis.

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In this thesis I have addressed some of the problems that have arisen in critical approaches to the nonsense works of Edward Lear from the late nineteenth century. I have entitled it “Reading Nonsense” because my central concern is with how best to apprehend the paradoxes inherent in literary nonsense, which inevitably raises interpretative questions. Because nonsense is a “basic type of communication” whose essence is “unresolved tension between [the] presence and absence of meaning” (Tigges, Anatomy 51), we are called upon either to “make sense of” that which claims to offer up no meaning or to surrender ourselves to meaninglessness. Broadly, critical approaches to nonsense fall into two classes: those that maintain that nonsense is not, in fact, “not sense”, but rather a kind of symbolic language that can be reconciled into meaning; and those which uphold the nonsensicality of nonsense, maintaining that certain ambiguities and paradoxes cannot be accounted for, and it is inappropriate to try to do so. In addition, Lear’s texts are situated in various traditions of writing for children and adults and in the distinctive setting of the Victorian era; and these cultural and literary influences play an important role in the interpretation and misinterpretation of nonsense. My first chapter comprises a mise en scène of the genre of literary nonsense; while in Chapter 2 I turn to the cultural backdrop of Lear’s nonsense in particular, and examine one of the claims frequently made in nonsense criticism: that Lear’s literary nonsense is distinctively “Victorian”. Chapter 3, “How to Read a Learian Limerick”, rests on the exegesis of nonsense that appears in Chapter 1, for here I propose a technique for reading Lear’s limericks that preserves both their “sensical” and nonsensical elements in contrast to critical analyses that attempt to reconcile the nonsense into a code. In Chapter 4 I examine Lear’s songs from the critical perspectives of nonsense and of romanticism. Finally, in conclusion, I consider the role and significance of humour in nonsense, and gesture towards further possible explorations, including in the appendix my essay on the nonsense poetry of South African writer Philip de Vos.

Nuclear Shakespeare: Apocalypse and Annihilation in King Lear and Hamlet Recent scholarship on Shakespeare's plays centres around the question of their relevance for the present day. Feminist, Marxist and post-colonial analyses speak to our globalised political context; post-structuralist methods explore the relationship between language and power; historicist methods look at the construction of modernity in Shakespeare's day; presentism considers the plays from a self-consciously present-focused perspective; and the recent eco-critical approach reads Shakespeare's plays in the light of the so-called "Anthopocene." In this thesis, I use an updated method of Derridean nuclear criticism, combined with materialist feminist critique, to examine the relevance of King Lear and Hamlet to today's heterogeneous threat of annihilation (including nuclear destruction, genocide, and ecological disaster through climate change), focusing on the implications of annihilation for artistic representation - literature, in particular. I also look at King Lear and Hamlet in their context of early modern Christian apocalypticism, taking apocalypticism as a possible precursor to today's discourses of annihilation. I argue that the spectre of annihilation problematises traditional realist mimesis, revealing the complex and...

Most scholarship regarding Shakespeare’s King Lear rests on the analysis of Lear and Cordelia, with the odd reference to the eldest daughter, Goneril, and brief homages to the Gloucester subplot. Lear’s middle daughter, Regan, is rarely mentioned at all, unless it is in conjunction with one of her more scholastically popular sisters. Within these marginalized moments of notice, Regan is routinely simplified as being just another sinful sister, fitting nicely into the accepted binaries of good and evil outlined within the play. Despite the fact that most binaries, like characters, are flawed, Regan has been given little to no chance to be absolved of her supposed offenses. By looking at Regan through the lenses of a theatrical character study and also as a subject of iconography within the realms of classical art, film, graphic novels, and the stage, I aim to prove that Regan, despite her consistent relegation to the shadows, is a three-dimensional character who has simply been dealt a difficult hand by her creator.

The 1970s brought a change to the face of the television sitcom, particularly with the works of Norman Lear, as comedy began to shift its focus away from portrayals of the ideal nuclear family to more complicated interactions with the outside world. This thesis focuses on All in the Family and the various ways that the series broke ground in its methods of social discourse. The series’ unique representation of working-class domestic life and its various distancing techniques provided a new challenge for sitcom audiences. With other Lear series and the likes of M*A*S*H and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, the 1970s television comedy landscape provided platform for socially conscious discourse. However, this period of progressive entertainment declined toward the end of the decade, as series like Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley sought to look backward rather than forward. From the 1980s to the 2000s, with a few exceptions, the focus of the sitcom reverted back to the preservation of idealized domestic and workplace families with the likes of Family Ties and Friends. However, the 2010s bring the promise of new social relevancy in television with series like Black-ish, which negotiate 1970s relevancy with 2010 narrative and aesthetic style, and streaming, non-network programs like Orange is the New Black and Transparent that experiment with genre in new ways.

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The incest prohibition, though ostensibly "universal," has inspired a wide range of explanations and definitions both within and between cultures. Intense debate sprung up around the incest taboo during the matrimonially tumultuous reign of Henry VIII, leading to the great interest in this theme, which flourished on the Elizabethan and Jacobean stages. Although Shakespeare contributed a number of works to the incest canon, King Lear does not treat the incest motif overtly such that many critics have ignored its crucial role in that play. A synthetic theoretical approach is useful in exploring the wide-reaching implications of father-daughter love in Lear, which challenges the parameters of the incest prohibition. / King Lear's effort to obstruct the marriage of Cordelia in the first scene constitutes a violation of the incest prohibition according to Levi-Strauss's notion of exogamy. To this violation, Cordelia contributes her belief that marriage requires only partial withdrawal of love from her father. Lear's unfulfilled love for his daughter Cordelia, whom he figures into wife and mother roles, exhibits oedipal traits and seeks gratification in Goneril and Regan. Lear experiences their "unnatural" refusal of his desires as emasculating sexual rejection, which manifests as the disease and guilt of transgression. He understands virtuous love as fatally tainted by sexual desire; the theme of love-as-death gains momentum. The tempest emerges as an agent of justice and punishment. Lear and Cordelia's reunion reasserts the themes of adulterous love and love-as-death, foreshadowing their shared death. Their subsequent capture introduces an expanded notion of the father-daughter relationship, including the possibility of conjugal love, which is consummated in their marriage in death.

Most people place their sincerest hopes for emotional fulfillment on a rewarding family life. The "loved ones" that constitute our nuclear and extended familial worlds are the primary beneficiaries of our affections and of the fruits of our labors. In return for the primacy we accord our family members, we expect their behavior to demonstrate their loyalty to the clan. However, at a certain point obligations to the family can conflict with the needs of the individual. In this thesis I examine how filial duties influence the plights of the tragic heroines in Sophocles's Antigone and Shakespeare's King Lear. Both Antigone and Cordelia organize their lives around the virtue of family honor, and yet the strength of these commitments is not sufficient to spare them from their respective, calamitous ends. Their unwavering dedication to the sanctity of family bonds leaves them susceptible, as individuals, to great harm.