„DVA TELA KRALJA “ REDUKOVANA NA OBIČNO „NIŠTA“: SLUČAJ ŠEKSPIROVOG RIČARDA II
“THE KING’S TWO BODIES” REDUCED TO “NOTHING”: THE CASE OF SHAKESPEARE’S RICHARD II

Summary/Abstract: In his study The King’s Two Bodies (1957), Kantorowicz explains the concept of the ruler’s divine power that spreads from its secular sources, whereby the dominant idea is that of the king’s two bodies: natural (mortal and transitory) and political (immortal and timeless). After applying this concept to the analysis of the tragic destiny of Shakespeare’s Richard II, the paper also deals with the idea of this king’s personal identity loss, its reduction to mere “nothing”, interpreted as an example of Shakespeare’s rhetorical deceptions (Gordić Petković 2012). Apart from these critical insights, the ideas of contemporary literary critics (Eagleton, Legatt, Montrose and Holderness) are also included in the theoretical framework of the paper.

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