King Lear
William Shakespeare
340 pp, $7.95. Order Now!
"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!"
One of the most popular of Shakespeare's plays, King Lear is also one of the most thought-provoking. The play turns on the practical ramifications of the words of Christ that we should render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and unto God that which is God's. When confronted with the demand that she should render unto Caesar that which is God's, Cordelia chooses to "love and be silent". As the play unfolds each of the principal characters learns wisdom through suffering.
Study Guide to King Lear
48 pp, $3.95
ICE Study Guides are constructed to aid the reader of ICE classics to achieve a level of critical and literary appreciation befitting the works themselves.
Ideally suited for students themselves and as a guide for teachers, the ICE Study Guides serve as a complement to the treasures of critical appreciation already included in ICE titles.
This edition includes new critical essays from some of the leading lights in contemporary literary scholarship as well as classic commentary from John Keats, Samuel Johnson, and A. C. Bradley. A great resource.
A look at the new essays
Plays are sometimes hard to 'see' if you're just reading, and live productions aren't always available, so James Bemis gives readers a guide to the film adaptations of King Lear, with attention to fidelity to the text and quality of performance. His guide can help you or your students connect with this great tragedy.
In "Nature and Convention in King Lear", Paul Cantor inspects Lear as a king destined to become, once again, a mere man. Robert Carballo investigates chaos and order in the work, on the grounds of organic wholeness, and Scott Crider draws from an in-class dispute over Lear an appreciation of the play, and the dialogue it takes to understand the play.
Joseph Pearce contributes an essay on Lear's dramatic and historical context, suggesting we can easily fail in "Seeing the Comedy of the Tragedy". Jack Trotter rounds it all out by making the case for the interior necessity of King Lear being a redemptive, not a nihilistic, work.
R. V. Young situates the reader with the introductory essay. [Read excerpt.]
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Meet the Minds behind the King Lear Edition
Editor & Critical Essayist
Joseph Pearce
JOSEPH PEARCE is the acclaimed author of numerous literary studies, including Literary Converts, The Quest for Shakespeare, and Shakespeare on Love, as well as popular biographies of Oscar Wilde, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He is the general editor of the Ignatius Critical Editions series.
Critical Essayists
James Bemis
James Bemis is an editorial board member, weekly columnist, and film critic for California Political Review and is a frequent contributor to Latin Mass Magazine. His five-part series "Through the Eyes of the Church", on the Vatican's list of the forty-five "Most Important Films in the Century of Cinema", was published in the Wanderer. His essays on film adaptations of King Lear, The Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, and Macbeth have appeared in the Ignatius Critical Editions of the plays. He is currently writing a book on Christianity, culture, and the cinema.
Critical Essays in
Paul A. Cantor
Paul A. Cantor is Clifton Waller Barrett Professor of English at the University of Virginia. He is the author of numerous essays and several books on Shakespeare, including Shakespeare's Rome: Republic and Empire and the Hamlet volume in the Cambridge Landmarks of World Literature Series.
Critical Essays in
Robert Carballo
Robert Carballo is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Millersville University of Pennsylvania, where he served for many years as Director of Graduate English Studies. He teaches courses in Victorian literature, the Romantic poets, drama, comparative literature, and the short story. His publications include studies on John Henry Newman, Matthew Arnold, John Dryden, and Shakespeare, among others, and have appeared in scholarly journals in the United States, England, France, Puerto Rico, and Hungary.
Scott Crider
Scott Crider is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Writing Program at the University of Dallas. He has published articles on Shakespeare and a textbook, The Office of Assertion: An Art of Rhetoric for the Academic Essay (ISI Books, 2005). He is currently working on a book on Shakespeare and the ethics of rhetoric.
Critical Essays in
Jack Trotter
Jack Trotter has a Ph.D. in medieval and Renaissance literature from Vanderbilt University (1995). He has published numerous essays on Shakespearean drama and, more recently, nineteenth-century literature. He also publishes frequently in Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.
Critical Essays in
R. V. Young
R. V. Young is Professor of English at North Carolina State University. He is co-founder of the John Donne Journal and was co-editor for 25 years. In 2008 he became the editor of Modern Age: A Quarterly Review. His bilingual edition of Justus Lipsius' Concerning Constancy is forthcoming from Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies. In addition to scholarly books and articles, he has also contributed to journals such as First Things, National Review, The Weekly Standard, the St. Austin Review, and Touchstone, of which he is a contributing editor.