SOURCE: Holahan, Michael. “‘Look, Her Lips’: Softness of Voice, Construction of Character in King Lear.” Shakespeare Quarterly 48, no. 4 (winter 1997): 406-31.

In the following excerpt, Holahan studies the treatment of literary character in King Lear, stressing the construction and function of Cordelia in relation to Lear.

I

Slack and sleeping senses must be addressed with thunder and heavenly fireworks. But the voice of beauty speaks gently: it creeps only into the most awakened souls.¹

Twentieth-century theorists have been severe with the notion of literary character. It does not speak strongly to post-Victorian souls—to this century's skepticism toward moral and mimetic constructions. The New Criticism set character aside for finer patterns of imagery and wit or paradoxical structures of ironical tone. Myth criticism subsumed it in the more powerful archetype. Deconstruction, new historicism, and the related specialties of poststructural critique have viewed an obviously figurative construct with alert suspicion...