PROGRAMME DETAILS FOR THE 188TH SEASON 2011/2012

TUESDAY 8 NOVEMBER 2011
PROFESSOR EWAN FERNIE

Chair and Professor of Shakespeare Studies at The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham

Ewan Fernie is the author of Shame in Shakespeare, editor of Spiritual Shakespeares and co-ordinating editor of Reconceiving the Renaissance. He has recently completed a Macbeth novel called Bloodhill with Simon Palfrey, with whom he is also General Editor of the 'Shakespeare Now!' series of short, provocative books published by Continuum. He is writing a critical book for Routledge on the demonic from Shakespeare to Thomas Mann. And he is Principal Investigator of the AHRC / ESRC funded project, 'The Faerie Queene Now: Remaking Religious Poetry for Today's World', for which he has written Redcrosse: A New Celebration of England and St George with the poets Andrew Motion, Michael Symmons Roberts and Jo Shapcott and the theologian Andrew Shanks. Redcrosse was premiered at St George's Chapel, Windsor and Manchester Cathedral in 2011 and is due to be taken by the RSC to Coventry Cathedral in its jubilee year of 2012.

King Lear and the Positivity of Possession

This paper will explore the strange association between goodness and the demonic in Edgar / Poor Tom. Bradley called Edgar the most religious character in King Lear but the religious role Edgar performs is of a terrifyingly demonic character. This, he will argue, has been seriously underestimated in current criticism and he will go on to probe the conjunction of passion and possession in Edgar's demonic masquerade in order to uncover some buried and provocative continuities between sex, the demonic and religious experience. He will ultimately suggest that Poor Tom embodies an agonised spirituality of possession in terms of radical susceptibility. This contrasts with the spirituality of limitation and reserve which Cordelia portrays. And he will argue that it is more existentially troubling, illuminating and even potentially inspiring for all than any critical treatment of Poor Tom in terms of mere theatricality is willing to confront.

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