Augustine’s Confessions and Shakespeare’s King Lear

<p><b>Paffenroth returns to two of the most quintessentially commanding yet vulnerable protagonists in the Western canon – Augustine, the real life, fifth century bishop of Hippo, known to us mostly through his own telling of his life in <i>Confessions</i>; and King Lear, the legendary king of Briton, known to us mostly from Shakespeare’s version of his tragic end. </b><br><br>Having examined problems addressed in both works of love, language, nature, and reason, Paffenroth here picks up more purely relational matters: both protagonists wield (or have wielded) power over others, yet struggle to learn its right application; both raise children, but have deeply problematic relations with their children, their partners, and (in the case of Augustine at least) their parents; neither has an intuitive or unproblematic relationship with a fully present God or gods – Augustine struggles mightily to have such, while Lear cries out to heaven but it is unclear he ever gets a reply. As different as the books and men are, how they relate to women and God shows illuminating and complementary points of comparison.</p>