ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses three wider dimensions that fit with a systemic approach: the ‘decentred self,’ the intersections between gender, nature and power and the devices of language. Transformations of power and their challenges to selfhood are embedded in the language of the play. King Lear is a tragedy that undermines stable meanings and confounds false dichotomies such as mind and body or sanity and insanity in a way that is both disturbing and liberating. Lear is forced to question the identity he has relied upon within his political, social and familial world. The emotions he experiences contradict everything he previously expected of himself. The restoration of Lear’s relationship with Cordelia is ripped away by her death but the final scenes between father and daughter, touching as they are, also reveal a great deal about processes of gender and power.
