King Lear Shakespeare's Dark Consolations

A book on the experience of reading Shakespeare's 'dark plays'.

As part of the My Reading series, King Lear is a personal meditation on a great literary work. Arthur Frank brings a career of studying illness experience and suffering to consider how King Lear can aid people whose lives need help. Reading King Lear leads Frank to both an encounter with his own old age and a source of consolation-companionship--in his future. This book does not try to minimize vulnerabilities, but it shows what is fully human, and thus shared, in suffering. The book introduces readers to King Lear, and it invites those who know the play to a new consideration for its ability to affect people's lives.

Arthur W. Frank, Professor Emeritus, University of Calgary

Arthur Frank received his doctorate in sociology from Yale in 1975 and spent his career teaching at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. After his retirement in 2013, he taught in Norway; throughout his career he has lectured internationally and held visiting professorships in Australia and
England. His work has focused on the experience of serious illness, beginning with his memoir, At the Will of the Body and his most cited work, The Wounded Storyteller. His most recent book was Letting Stories Breathe (Chicago, 2010). He is an elected member of the Royal Society of Canada and
recipient of the Career Achievement Award from the Canadian Bioethics Society.

Prologue: A Tale of Two Families
Vulnerable Reading
The Unravelling
The Refuge of Second Selves
The Lost, the Mad, and the Image of Horror
Reconciliations
Living With an Unpromised End
How King Lear Helps
Tragic Sharing
Coda: In Place of the Jig