Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 86

MODERN AGE

WINTER 2017

English stage for a century and a half. "I was many years ago so
shocked by Cordelia's death," Johnson famously writes, "that I
know not whether I ever endured to read again the last scenes of
the play till I undertook to revise them as an editor."27 But Shakespeare and Wimsatt, along with most modern critics, are surely
right in judging that manipulative poetic justice is compatible
neither with the highest art nor with the highest morality. Surely
Cordelia is a more convincing embodiment of justice and charity
because she goes to her death with no reward but virtue and no
assurance even that her enemies will be punished.
King Lear is also a more Christian play because-not in spite of-
the grimness of its tragic close. After all, Christ "came not to bring
peace but a sword" (Matt. 10:34) and requires His disciple to "deny
himself, take up his cross, and follow me" (Matt. 16:24): justice is
not promised us in this life-indeed we are warned not to expect
it.28 King Lear is good, therefore, because it is according to literary standards true and beautiful, terms that St. Thomas Aquinas
treats as transcendentals convertible with being and goodness.
To be sure, he does not use the term transcendental,29 and explicitly disagrees with Aristotle in regarding truth as in some sense
residing in things, rather than only in the intellect. In this vision of
truth and beauty, although St. Thomas says little about the arts,
he lays the groundwork for an understanding of the morality of
literature. "Just as the good is convertible with being," the Angelic
Doctor maintains, "so also is the true. But further, just as the good
confers upon being the additional notion of the desirable, so also
the true adds a relation to the intellect."30 Similarly, "the beautiful
is the same as the good, differing only in reason. For since the
good is what all things desire, it is part of the idea of the good that
the appetite be in it placated: but it belongs to the idea of the
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Modern Age - Winter 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Modern Age - Winter 2017

Contents
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - Cover1
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Modern Age - Winter 2017 - Contents
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