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Continuing on Cavell's essay "The Avoidance of Love: A Reading of King Lear" (1969), shifting away from Lear in particular to a more general discussion of tragedy and Cavell's psychological insights.
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End song: "Out of Your Hands" by Gretchen's Wheel, i.e., Lindsay Murray, as interviewed for Nakedly Examined Music #81.
Wonderful episode on King Lear and Stanley Cavell’s essay on it. And not just because I have been pestering Mark and Wes for years about the show turning to Cavell’s work. He is the major 20th century philosopher most likely to be ignored or dismissed, and by those who could know better. Speaking as someone who pursued literary studies in the university but thought better of it, it is ironic to read Cavell described in your show introduction as “a major figure in literary theory.” He should be, but isn’t. He is, as Cavell says himself about Thoreau, overpraised and undervalued. To get a glimpse of the neglect Cavell suffers in literary studies, consult the vast Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, all 2848 pages of it, and you will find no entry on Cavell. Despite endless entries on decidedly inferior figures, many of whom have done no work at all as critics of specific works of literature, or even on literature whatsoever. Garrett Stewart, in a fine essay on Cavell’s disappointing reception in literary studies, refers to the discipline’s “avatars of disregard.” That disregard was a primary reason I escaped literary studies for good.