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Shakespeare's Spiral
Tracing the Snail in King Lear and Renaissance Painting
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2010
Summary
Shakespeare's Spiral aims to explore a figure forgotten in the dramatic texts of Shakespeare and in Renaissance painting: the snail. Taking as its point of departure the emergence of the gastropod object/subject in the text of King Lear as well as its iconic interface in Giovanni Bellini's painting Allegory of Falsehood (circa 1490), this study sets out to follow the particular path traced by the snail throughout the Iuvre. From the central scene in which the metaphor of the snail and of its shell is specifically made manifest when Lear discovers, in a raging storm, the spectacle of Edgar disguised as Poor Tom coming out of his shelter (III.3.6-9) to the monster, this fiend, displaying on the cliffs of Dover, 'horms whelked and waved like the enridg_d sea' (IV.6.71), this work is the trace of a narrative - of a journey of the gaze - during the course of which the cryptic question of the gastropod - 'Why a Snail [_]?' (I.5.26) - does not cease to be developed and transformed. Incorporating a wide-ranging post-structuralist critique, the study aims to bring to light the particular functions of this 'revealing detail' in both its textual and visual dimension so as to put forward a new and innovatory understanding of the tragedy of King Lear.
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Bibliographic data
Copyright year
2010
ISBN-Print
978-0-7618-4137-1
ISBN-Online
978-0-7618-4893-6
Publisher
Hamilton Books, Lanham
Language
English
Pages
254
Product type
Book Titles
Table of contents
ChapterPages
Contents No access
Illustrations No access
Acknowledgments No access
Introduction No access
Part One. A Shakespearean Gaze at the Snail No access Pages 1 - 44
Part Two. The Renascent Spiral: Dazzling-Darkening No access Pages 45 - 162
Part Three. Under the Eye of Gorgô or the Medusa-Snail No access Pages 163 - 218
