King Lear and the Naked Truth: Rethinking the Language of Religion and Resistance.

Judy Kronenfeld. King Lear and the Naked Truth: Rethinking the Language of Religion and Resistance.

Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1998. xiv + 383 pp. $64.95 (cl); $21.95 (pbk).

ISBN: 0-8223-2027-4 (cl); 0-8223-2038-X (pbk).

This study has several objectives: at its simplest it "investigates the images and metaphors of nakedness and clothing (and the material realities to which they relate) in Renaissance religious, political, and literary culture, and applies the resulting understanding of that metaphor field to King Lear" (1). Further, in analysing such a semantic field, it becomes a study in historical semiotics which generates a theoretical contribution to the polarized debates of poststructuralism. Judy Kronenfeld seeks to reexamine the assumptions about language which underpin both deconstruction and the various new historicisms, and to mediate between such concepts as infinitely regressive meaning, repressive hegemonic cultural codes, and unbounded polyvalency. The core of the investigation derives from the recognition of "the degree to which both radical and conservative possibilities are grounded in Reformation Protestant religious and social ideology as a whole" (7).

In the first part of the book, "Theory and Semantic Field," Kronenfeld begins by demonstrating what she calls "systematicity" (28), the shared discourse of Puritan and Anglican which produces the positive and negative of both "naked" (truth or shame) and "clothed" (modesty or meretriciousness) in literal and metaphorical contexts. The author goes on to challenge postmodern critics' misuse of Saussure's sign-signifier binarism as inadequate for the complexity of controversy on the Eucharist, for example. Applying St. Augustine's distinction, Kronenfeld shows how res (the inner spiritual reality) "clothes" the sacramentum (the outward visible sign), in the Protestant rejection of transubstantiation which thus retained belief in a real presence, but of a spiritual kind. From recognition of the "shared core concepts" (53) as sufficiently malleable to contain contradiction, Kronenfeld develops a post-Saussurean theory of "extensionist" semantics which emphasizes relations of contrast or opposition, within somethi ng richly conceptual like "naked" and "clothing," rather than simple polarized referents (either Anglican or Puritan). Unlike the notion of an hegemonic implacable code, such shared concepts generate meanings.

In "Cultural Thematics," the second part, selected key words and issues from King Lear are reexamined in the light of the above methodology. Modern theoretical, and traditional historicist readings of Cordelia's "bond" as indicative of the historical development from feudalism to capitalism, hierarchy to individualism, are shown to be tendentious in their one-sided selection of evidence when compared to Kronenfeld's researches, and in particular in her demonstration of highly conservative "bonds" of patriarchalism within so-called radical Protestantism (100). Again, Cordelia's (and Kent's) "plainness" cannot be identified as an essentially Puritan posture in contrast to the outward show of false eloquence. Kronenfeld shows how such dichotomies are more in the mind of theorists, scholars and critics, than in "the common Christian culture as a whole" (106). Similarly, such topics as premortem inheritance, monarchical and paternal authority, spiritual equality and political inequality in King Lear are shown to be contained within the contemporary "extensionist" semantics of Protestantism rather than anticipating the revolutionary radicalism of the 1650s. One of Kronenfeld's most absorbing chapters focuses on the interpretation of "superfluity" and "distribution" in King Lear in the contrasting terms of Anabaptist egalitarianism and Anglican charity. Far from Christian communism, these words were "entirely compatible with homiletic exhortations to private and public charity" and were "perfectly accordant with ... the existence of a hierarchical social order" (172-73). Kronenfeld's evidence for "distribution" as charity is overwhelming, not least because of the startling absence of this meaning from the OED.

Radical interpretations of the imaginary mock trial scene of Goneril and Regan (in Q) and Lear's assault on justice (4.6) are considered in the penultimate chapter, primarily in relation to the trial of Lady Meed in Piers the Plowman, and the trial of Velvet Breeches and Cloth Breeches in a sixteenth century prose work by one "F.T." entitled The Debate betweene Pride and Lowlines ... (1577?). These trials, Kronenfeld shows, "are part of a widely available and long-standing Christian understanding of the limits of earthly justice and the role that Avarice plays in society" (207-08), and thus the parallel trials of King Lear should not be regarded as "exclusively radical" (208). The contrast between routine homiletics and the dynamism of Shakespeare here raises an overall qualm. Convincing demonstration of methodological inadequacy is one thing, but the implied adequacy of limiting Shakespearean meaning to the common denominators of Christian discourse is another. Towards the end of this chapter Kronenfeld rec ognises that meaning can be generated by the "emotional intensity" of a scene which impels radically orientated critics to seek an "ideological analogue" (224) in revolutionary discourse to complement the dramatic significance. If the affective powers of theatre can do this then meaning takes on the volatility of dramatic revisionism which indeed could be regarded as potentially radical, and contribute to the impulse for the dynamism of diachronic semantic change.

However, King Lear and the Naked Truth is richly researched, deeply learned, and largely achieves what it sets out to do. This is an important study from which all readers will learn.