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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.79816 |
| Date | January 2003 |
| Creators | Adamian, Stephen P. |
| Contributors | Bristol, Michael (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Department of English.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002086201, proquestno: AAIMQ98408, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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