Abstract

This essay considers King Lear’s invocation of an animal voice as a mode of expressing the nothingness that contests and eludes speech. I argue that the imitation of animal voice, in its resistance of the play’s representative frame, offers an experience of a positive negativity that radicalizes Cordelia’s inexpressible love and effectively indicts the construction of discursive meaning. At this thematic ground zero, I contend that King Lear not only explores the porous boundary between man and animal but also depicts a tragic vision that arises from the tension between linguistic meaning and inarticulate grief.

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