Ramsay – Campion Great Books Podcast: Episode 2 Shakespeare’s King Lear – Part 2

Welcome to the 2023 Ramsay – Campion Great Books Podcast Series.

The series continues with the second of two conversations on Shakespeare’s King Lear — the story of a King who divides his kingdom between two sinister daughters while disinheriting and disavowing the daughter who is most devoted to him.

In this podcast Dr Stephen McInerney, Director of the Centre for the Study of the Western Tradition at Campion College is joined by Dr Kishore Saval, Senior Lecturer in the Western Civilisation Program at ACU, together with Professor Renée Köhler-Ryan, National Head of the School of Philosophy and Theology at the University of Notre Dame Australia.

This conversation opens on the cliff’s edge, with Edgar (‘Poor Tom’) and his father, Gloucester. It explores what it means for a child to realise his parent is no longer an authority figure, that the parent has in fact become like the child, and the child like the parent. In addition, we explore the often conflicting meanings of the concept of Nature in the play, why mothers are absent from the play, and why Lear goes mad.