The King and the Adulteress: A Psychoanalytic and Literary Reinterpretation of Madame Bovary and King Lear

Author:   Roberto Speziale-Bagliacca ,  Colin Rice ,  Aina Pavolini Taylor ,  Aina Pavolini Taylor
Publisher:   Duke University Press
ISBN:  

9780822320753


Pages:   277
Publication Date:   20 March 1998
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
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The King and the Adulteress: A Psychoanalytic and Literary Reinterpretation of Madame Bovary and King Lear


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Overview

The King and the Adulteress brings together two essays that propose radically revisionary readings of two of the most important literary works in the Western canon, Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and Shakespeare’s King Lear. In offering a new understanding of a deeply sadomasochistic relationship and of an authoritarian pathology, renowned psychoanalyst Roberto Speziale-Bagliacca combines psychoanalysis with literary studies to challenge the conventional judgments of readers and the stereotyped interpretations of literary critics to these masterpieces. Approaching the characters in Bovary and Lear from both an analytic and a critical viewpoint, Speziale-Bagliacca reinterprets many issues and events that involve archetypal figures of modern literary mythology. In fact, he reverses much of the received opinion about them. Charles Bovary, for example, far from being a victim of his wife’s neurotic restlessness or the epitome of a passive imbecile, is a masochist of the highest order who makes a decisive contribution to Emma’s miserable end. Lear, rather than a tragedy involving the sweet Cordelia, noble Kent, and the Fool as good and loyal supporters of an old king driven to madness by his overbearing evil daughters, is precisely the opposite. The sympathetic understanding of the reader should go, Speziale-Bagliacca suggests, also to Regan, Goneril, and Edmund, while the king, whose crisis is interpreted in the light of psychoanalytic findings on depression, finally becomes the true unbeloved ""bastard"" of the play. Roberto Speziale-Bagliacca is a psychoanalyst and Professor of Psychotherapy at the Medical School of the University of Genoa. He is the author of On the Shoulders of Freud and many other works.

Full Product Details

Author:   Roberto Speziale-Bagliacca ,  Colin Rice ,  Aina Pavolini Taylor ,  Aina Pavolini Taylor
Publisher:   Duke University Press
Imprint:   Duke University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 22.90cm , Height: 2.00cm , Length: 15.20cm
Weight:   0.553kg
ISBN:  

9780822320753


ISBN 10:   0822320754
Pages:   277
Publication Date:   20 March 1998
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

Table of Contents

Foreword / Frank Kermode vii Preface xi Acknowledgments xv Charbovari: An Essay on Madame Bovary 1 Not Merely an Imbecile 1 But He Is Fast Asleep! 13 The Art of Irritating 18 How to Avoid Gangrene 26 Blindness 39 A Matter of Fate 46 A Wholly Fictitious Story 54 Les Imbéciles! 59 Insatiability 64 Justin and Justine 67 Oedipus and Orestes 72 The Barbarous Scythian: An Essay on King Lear 81 Neither Letters nor Words 81 Commonplaces 82 Cordelia the Favorite 84 The Fool and Melancholy 93 The Fool's Techniques 98 The Coxcomb 101 The Barbarous Scythian 106 The Egg and the Two Crowns 108 Noble Kent 112 Dissonance 122 The Two Monsters of Ingratitute 124 Text or Performance? 129 The Bastard 133 Notes 137 Index 159

Reviews

praise for the Italian edition: <br> I read this book with passion from beginning to end. --Pierre Bourdieu


""A remarkable study of King Lear . . . an extremely interesting and, I think, tenable thesis . . . at least as tenable as Ernest Jones’s study of Hamlet’s oedipal fixation.""-Anthony Burgess ""I was truly fascinated by this book, which introduces a totally unexpected, though perfectly plausible and, in a sense, obvious, reading of Madame Bovary. From now on, it will be impossible to ignore this work whenever a study of Flaubert’s novel is undertaken.""-Jean-Pierre Richard praise for the Italian edition: ""I read this book with passion from beginning to end.""-Pierre Bourdieu


A remarkable study of King Lear . . . an extremely interesting and, I think, tenable thesis . . . at least as tenable as Ernest Jones's study of Hamlet's oedipal fixation. -Anthony Burgess I was truly fascinated by this book, which introduces a totally unexpected, though perfectly plausible and, in a sense, obvious, reading of Madame Bovary. From now on, it will be impossible to ignore this work whenever a study of Flaubert's novel is undertaken. -Jean-Pierre Richard praise for the Italian edition: I read this book with passion from beginning to end. -Pierre Bourdieu


The King and the Adultress is a well researched, well written and fascinating study. . . . Not only does [Speziale-Bagliacca] question conventional interpretations, but he turns them on their ear. His thesis is plausible, well defended, and actually, so obvious and convincing that one wonders why no one had thought of it before; it is certain to influence future readings of Madame Bovary and King Lear. <br>--L. Suzanne Hayman, Dalhousie French Studies


praise for the Italian edition: I read this book with passion from beginning to end. -Pierre Bourdieu I was truly fascinated by this book, which introduces a totally unexpected, though perfectly plausible and, in a sense, obvious, reading of Madame Bovary. From now on, it will be impossible to ignore this work whenever a study of Flaubert's novel is undertaken. -Jean-Pierre Richard A remarkable study of King Lear . . . an extremely interesting and, I think, tenable thesis . . . at least as tenable as Ernest Jones's study of Hamlet's oedipal fixation. -Anthony Burgess


Author Information

Roberto Speziale-Bagliacca is a psychoanalyst and Professor of Psychotherapy at the Medical School of the University of Genova. He is the author of numerous works including On the Shoulders of Freud.

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