Works Cited

Bell, Millicent. Naked Lear. Raritan: A Quarterly Review 23.4 (2004): 55-70. EBSCOHost.
Web. 16 April 2013.
Bells argument is rooted in the early modern understanding of the identity as affected by the
external environment and ever-changing. She traces Lears words, Is man no more than this? to
Montaignes challenge to the idea of fixed, intrinsic individuality (59). Focusing particularly
on the importance of dress in the period, she investigates the role of clothing in transforming
characters, connecting the stripping of clothing in Lear to the stripping and changing of identity.
Bell argues that Lear and Edgar, in their nakedness, become representations of
unaccommodated man, and are stripped of those marks of identity which once defines them
(60). She reads Kents disguise as transformative, conflating the disguises and
transformations of Edgar and Kent (61). She notes in particular the role of language in
disguising Kents identity (67). Bell then goes on to argue that transformation is nearly
irreversible in Shakespeares tragedies (63), a statement which does not seem applicable to
Kents state. Edgar, she contends, undergoes transformative change (64), but I would contend
that, though he has stepped out of the identity of Edgar, he never fully settles into the identity of
Poor Tom. Bell seems to only make room for the possibility of disguise or transformation in the
case of Edgar, rather than reading his state as a space of transition. Finally, Bell reads nothing
in the context of disputed religious doctrine, contrasting a denial of ex nihilo to Christian
teaching about the beginning and end of all things (69). She points out the plays lack of a sense
of ending, as well as a moment of illumination (70). In this, Bell ultimately contends that
nothingness in the play signifies the final absence of meaning, calling into question the notions
of a beginning and end, reflecting, perhaps a human story that has no comprehensible start or
finish (69-70). Nakedness in this sense, then, connects to an undefinability inherent to identity
that is merely given exterior form (a start or finish) by clothing. I will apply Bells argument in
the context of the critical discussion of identity within my paper. While similar in her discussion
of nakedness to the environmental readings of identity as connected to the external environment,
Bell does not delve into the role that the natural environment plays in shaping and changing
identity. Her argument, can be built upon by the environmental critical perspective to support my
analysis of Lears entry into the storm, as well as Edgars entry into nothing. I will counter her
position on nothing in the play by developing the connection between the entrance into
nothing and the stripping of clothing in order to argue that nothing is a creative and
transitional space in the play.
Calderwood, James L. Creative Uncreation in King Lear. Shakespeare Quarterly 37.1 (1986):
5-19. JSTOR. Web. 16 April 2013.
Calderwood joins in a critical discussion of Shakespeares creative authority over his plays. He
contends that Lear, similarly to Henry V, illustrates Shakespeares acknowledgement that he is
not sole creator of the play (5). Calderwood defines the creativity in Lear to be creative
uncreation (5). In order to define what he means by this statement, he calls upon Russian
Formalism and the idea of defamiliarization or alienation that allows a reconceptualization
of meaning (6). Creative uncreation in Lear, therefore, seeks to understand the degeneration of
Lear from King in control of space, through his division of space, to the point of his nakedness in
the storm as a means of returning to and comprehending a creative origin. Calderwood cites
language as the origin of Lears initial power in the play, contending that his storm is the result

of realizing that he has given power to words which had no meaning (13). Calderwood sees
Shakespeares own use of and relationship with language reflected in the play, stating that
Shakespeare, violates language, rips words from their meanings, scatters sense in all directions,
lets signifieds be ravened up by signifiers, until the deconstituted stuff of his art, like humanity
itself in Albany's prediction, "must perforce prey on itself, / Like monsters of the deep" (IV.ii.4950) (13). Shakespeare, for Calderwood, dramatizes his experience of writing in Lear, illustrating
the process of pulling language apart and re-constructing it (13). Similar to Bell, Calderwood
suggests that, at the plays end, the work with language that the play has accomplished has not
ended, but merely stopped (17). He argues that the play, by its finale, has not reached the
worst, but has implied that the tragedy and the unraveling of meaning will continue (19). This is
because the tragedy exists beyond the capacity for language to express or define. Calderwood
reads the verbal nothingness in the play as a collapse of meaning, from which nothing can
emerge (7). He then contends that the collapse of verbal orderings reduce all to a state in which
they merely are (8). While this aspect of Calderwoods argument lends itself to the
environmental lens of viewing the body in nature, stripped of all material attributes, I think more
can be done with the verbal space of nothing than he details in this article. Beyond reading
nothingness as a space in which the characters merely are, the creative uncreation of the
nothing space functions to defamiliarize the characters, pulling them into a space of transition
and re-creation outside of their former identities.
Neely, Carol Thomas. Documents in Madness: Reading Madness and Gender in
Shakespeares Tragedies and Early Modern Culture. Shakespeare Quarterly 42.3 (1991):
315-338. JSTOR. Web. 09 May 2013.
Neely investigates the manifestations of madness in the early modern period. Contending that
madness itself is in flux and indefinite, she argues that it must, therefore, be defined in some
framework (316). In Shakespeares time, madness was a topic in transition, fluctuating between
inscription as an intersection between the human, the divine, and the demonic and its
secularized, medicalized, psychologized, and gendered state (318). Neely contends that
madness in the early modern period began to be defined as a separation, a splitting, or an
alienation (319). She reads Shakespeares plays as providing a language and a site for the
redefinition of madness (321). Analyzing the way that the linguistic and gender coding and
practices of madness in Shakespeares plays participate in the early modern culture, she looks
closely at the language of madness employed by Shakespeare, particularly its alienated nature,
gender distinctions, and the feigned and natural patterns of madness in Hamlet, Macbeth, and
Lear (323). Addressing madness in Lear, Neely argues that Edgars feigned madness is
contrasted with Lears natural madness (333). She contends that Edgars alienation arises from
his appropriation of voices, while Lears is on a continuum with his sanity (334). She reads
Lears madness as associated with feminine hysteria, noting the fragmented beside himself
nature of his discourse (334). The fantasies Lear enacts in his mad state, Neely contends, expose
Lears own habit of persecuting others and conceal his own guilt, ultimately revealing the
fraudulent nature of justice (335). Madness, then, serves as social critique and illustrates the
manner in which reading and defining madness is usually to dissociate oneself from the
condition and to regulate its disruptiveness (336). Neely ultimately argues that theaters role in
this process was to represent and disseminate madness in such a way that it contributed to its
changing constructions and its destabilizing potential (337). The language the theater provided
for madness contributed to its secularization and medicalization (337). Neelys argument for the

transitional nature of madness is useful in setting up the context of my argument for the role of
madness in the play and its resistance to definition. Her discussion of the alienating nature of the
language of madness, particularly the language of Edgar, contributes to my discussion of
nothing space in Lear and the undefined language associated with this space. Her argument
ultimately provides a cultural context for perceptions of madness in Lear. Reading the space of
madness as one that is undefined but inscribed by cultural definitions connects madness to the
indefinite state of nothing in the play.