The King and the Adulteress: A Psychoanalytic and Literary Reinterpretation of Madame Bovary and King Lear

In the mad scramble that is everyday life, one seldom has the time, the opportunity, or perhaps, the self-knowledge to step back and look at the whole picture--that's what hindsight is for. In retrospect we can see how decisions and events led to specific consequences, and we can speculate on how things might be now if even one choice, one action had been different. Literature is a different proposition entirely; here we have entire histories encapsulated within the acts of play, the chapters of a novel, or the lines of a poem. We can see how personality, conflict and choice all work on one or more of the characters, and if the piece is good, by the time we reach the end the resolution seems both right and inevitable.

In The King and the Adulteress, Italian psychoanalyst Roberto Speziale-Bagliacca takes two of Western culture's most enduring works, Shakespeare's King Lear and Flaubert's Madame Bovary and applies his science to their art. Certainly this makes for an interesting academic exercise--Speziale-Bagliacca speculates about Lear's insecurity and Charles and Emma's relationship--but does it add either understanding or enjoyment to our experience of these works of art? In the end, the fate of mad King Lear bellowing his rage and despair on a storm-tossed moor makes perfect psychological sense without the psychoanalysis. Still, for a different take on what made Emma Bovary or Lear tick, The King and the Adulteress might be of interest.