BETWEEN LETTER AND GESTURE: KINETIC NARRATIVES OF EMOTION IN KING LEAR

Abstract

This study explores how Shakespeare’s King Lear expresses emotion through the intertwined languages of gesture and letter. It argues that the play transforms both physical movement and written text into living forms of communication that reveal the fragility of human feeling. Through close reading and qualitative interpretation, the research examines scenes where silence, movement, and writing replace speech as emotional media. Drawing on affect theory and embodiment studies, it finds that emotion in King Lear moves between the body and the page, never stable yet always powerful. Gestures such as Cordelia’s silence or Lear’s final embrace embody sincerity that words cannot hold, while letters, both real and forged, extend emotion across distance but often distort it. Together, they form a kinetic system of expression that defines the play’s tragic rhythm. The study concludes that Shakespeare presents emotion not as an inward state but as a moving energy that connects bodies, signs, and acts of writing. By joining gesture and letter within a single framework, the paper offers a new understanding of communication and feeling in early modern drama and invites reflection on how emotional truth still travels through mediated forms today.