"The curiosity of nations" : King Lear and the incest prohibition

The incest prohibition, though ostensibly "universal," has inspired a wide range of explanations and definitions both within and between cultures. Intense debate sprung up around the incest taboo during the matrimonially tumultuous reign of Henry VIII, leading to the great interest in this theme, which flourished on the Elizabethan and Jacobean stages. Although Shakespeare contributed a number of works to the incest canon, King Lear does not treat the incest motif overtly such that many critics have ignored its crucial role in that play. A synthetic theoretical approach is useful in exploring the wide-reaching implications of father-daughter love in Lear, which challenges the parameters of the incest prohibition.King Lear's effort to obstruct the marriage of Cordelia in the first scene constitutes a violation of the incest prohibition according to Levi-Strauss's notion of exogamy. To this violation, Cordelia contributes her belief that marriage requires only partial withdrawal of love from her father. Lear's unfulfilled love for his daughter Cordelia, whom he figures into wife and mother roles, exhibits oedipal traits and seeks gratification in Goneril and Regan. Lear experiences their "unnatural" refusal of his desires as emasculating sexual rejection, which manifests as the disease and guilt of transgression. He understands virtuous love as fatally tainted by sexual desire; the theme of love-as-death gains momentum. The tempest emerges as an agent of justice and punishment. Lear and Cordelia's reunion reasserts the themes of adulterous love and love-as-death, foreshadowing their shared death. Their subsequent capture introduces an expanded notion of the father-daughter relationship, including the possibility of conjugal love, which is consummated in their marriage in death