IN:\u00a0<\/strong>Partit\u00fara Irodalomtudom\u00e1nyi foly\u00f3irat, Volume: VIII. \u00a0, Issue 2, 2013 p. 3-22,\u00a0ISSN 1336-7307<\/span><\/p>\n DOI:<\/strong>\u00a010.17846\/PA.2013.8.2.3-22<\/p>\n Abstract<\/strong><\/p>\n Katchleen McLuskie\u2019s influential essay is a milestone in the development of\u00a0feminist criticism of Shakespeare. It argues against the tendency to take the\u00a0plays as expressing Shakespeare\u2019s own views, and to worry about whether this\u00a0made him pro- or anti-feminist. The essay argues that attention should rather be\u00a0paid to the narrative, poetic and theatrical strategies which construct the plays\u00a0meanings and positions the audience to understand their events from a particular\u00a0point of view. The essay highlights two Shakespearean plays, King Lear and\u00a0Measure for Measure from a feminist point of view and outlines the opportunities\u00a0of the feminist reproduction of the text. It argues that feminist criticism has no\u00a0point of entry into Measure for Measure, since all the dilemmas of the narrative\u00a0and sexuality are constructed in completely male terms, therefore, such narrative,\u00a0theatrical or intellectual pleasures of this text defined in male terms cannot\u00a0be accepted by a feminist critic. The central hypothesis of McLuskie\u2019s interpretation\u00a0of King Lear is that the narrative and its dramatization present a connection between sexual insubordination and anarchy, and this connection suggests\u00a0explicit misogyny. Therefore, the task of a feminist critic is to insist that the alternative\u00a0to the patriarchal family and heterosexual love is not chaos but the possibilityof new forms of social organisation and affective relationships.\u00a0McLuskie\u2019s method actively incorporates the assumptions of psychoanalysis as\u00a0well, and mirrors the plurality and diversity of feminist criticism and political practice.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n