Shakespeare’s King Lear is a Brexit play, argues Dr Stephen O’Neill

Dr Stephen O'Neill
Friday, September 27, 2019 - 15:00

Shakespeare’s King Lear is a Brexit play, argues Stephen O’Neill, in a new article that explores a range of discourses and media, from theatre productions and journalism to social media. With its themes of division and disbursement, of cliff edges and tragic self-immolation, King Lear has supplied a metaphor and analogy for the 23 June 2016 referendum on leaving the European Union. The article considers Shakespeare as itself a discourse through which cultural ideas, both real and imaginary, about Brexit and the EU are negotiated. How might Lear be remapped for the present and future, providing a Shakespeare that is simultaneously a site of supranational connections and of a desire for values of empathy and refuge that reverberate with debates about migration in Europe.
 
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