The first book-length attempt to set the generic parameters of early modern revenge tragedy was also the last. Since Fredson Bowers' Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy (1940), scholarship has interrogated literary and cultural issues within the genre. But it has left intact the prevailing assumption that such plays feature revenge as their principal focus, their very reason for existing as plays. Rather than privilege the retribution
trajectory as the end point of critical inquiry, my dissertation argues that revenge proved
a particularly apt vehicle for engaging with the highly contested philosophies of the period. For while critical discourse has read revenge as principally concerned with matters of justice and law, the retribution motif, unique among other early modern dramatic conventions, continually recalls to audience attention both the initiating forces behind current action and the fluid boundaries between the immaterial and material. By emphasizing the relationships between cause and effect, spirit and matter, and even idea and action, early modern revenge tragedies invite reconsideration, then, of a wider range of philosophies than the legal and religious injunctions overtly invoked within such plays. Indeed, early modern revenge drama takes on, with surprising sophistication, such
variegated matters as class, perceptions of moderation, the essential composition of the
material world, and the generation of political power through fabulist narrative. While
my individual chapters draw attention to strains of intellectual history not traditionally associated with each play - an Aristotelian faculty psychology in The Spanish Tragedy, the ethical mean in Titus Andronicus, the Lucretian atomism of Hamlet, and the Baconian fabulism of The Duchess of Malfi - my project seeks to reveal a larger point about the dynamics of revenge drama. This dissertation contends that early modern revenge tragedy emphasizes the complex interplay between the noetic, or conceptual, and the phenomenological in order to imagine, often in radical ways, the natural, ethical, and political philosophies that shape early modern culture.%%%%

/pdf/philosophies-of-retribution-kyd-shakespeare-webster-and-the-58in2librw.pdf

"Very Like a Whale": The Problem of Knowledge in Hamlet

Philosophies of retribution: Kyd, Shakespeare, Webster, and the revenge tragedy genre

Being regarded as a dramatist of all times, Shakespeare and his work is studied with a modern view point by many critics. Shakespeare is part of a modern tradition trying to mirror human psychology and condition in all its absurdity. The innovations the theatre of the Absurd has brought not only provide an influence for the works of the later generations but also, they make it possible to look back at the past works of the theatre with a contemporary critical eye. Shakespeare’s vision of the world is similar to that of the absurdists, mainly due to their shared confidence in humanity’s capacity to endure, and the precarious nature of human existence. This book analyzes Hamlet, mainly the drama of its protagonist, as a precursor of Absurd drama. In Hamlet, Shakespeare represents man’s existential anxiety and precarious condition in a nonsensical world, which is stripped of all logical explanations and accounts. To examine the play in the context of the theatre of the Absurd, it will be discussed in relation to Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Endgame with regard to their common concerns for the themes of the theatre of the Absurd such as uncertainty and inertia.

Shakespeare's Hamlet as a Precursor of the Theatre of the Absurd

/pdf/the-return-of-logos-language-and-meaning-in-hamlet-18bklpkfgt.pdf

The Return of Logos: Language and Meaning in Hamlet

Up to Act 4, Hamlet remembers the ghost. His actions, plots, and thinking have been the result of his compulsion to know which is related with the death drive. The death drive is characterized by self-destruction and aggressivity toward others. Hamlet indulged in this state of passivity, non-action, in many soliloquies, and in grappling with the impossible. At the same time he is so openly aggressive towards others that he torments Ophelia and Gertrude, distrusts women in general, and kills Polonius. He is not fashioning himself in an affirmative manner. However, in the 5th act, Hamlet begins to take care of himself and to refashion himself. Self-fashioning is a concept different from the pursuit of knowing that is contributive to self-indulgence. It is represented in the attitude of cherishing one's own self, one's own emotions, the spiritual aspect of life, and laboring to cherish them in reality. In Act 5, Hamlet decides to kill Claudius not only because Claudius killed Hamlet's father but also because Claudius tries to kill Hamlet himself. Hamlet also reveals his love for Ophelia, which he had denied before. He shows his inner feeling. His inner emotion, not the Ghost, becomes the most meaningful thing to Hamlet. Furthermore, he decides to engage in a losing game with Laertes, who was stronger in his fencing ability. It is Hamlet’s first time to be engaged in a losing game. He had often outwitted others and had never seriously failed. The fact that he is engaged in this losing game signifies that he does not care about winning over others and accepts that dying is something not to be afraid of and that death is so close to life. His changed attitude implies that he does not remember the ghost any more, which means that he has no guilty conscience towards the death of his father. Therefore Hamlet does not dwell on retaliating. The matter of living and dying does not torment him any more because he comes to accept the concept that dying is not the end of his life and dying is the action of Providence. Now Hamlet influenced by the ideas of the Reformation is refashioning himself. His attitude becomes serene and different from the soliloquy scene in which he was agonizing over the matter of living and dying and he has stronger inner power. And he engages in a losing game and expresses his love toward Ophelia. Hamlet comes to refashion in a new and positive manner.

햄릿의 자기(Self)의 재형성

/pdf/shakespeare-and-cervantes-are-dead-the-construction-of-1mapimo5q4.pdf

"Very Like a Whale": The Problem of Knowledge in Hamlet

Citations

Philosophies of retribution: Kyd, Shakespeare, Webster, and the revenge tragedy genre

Shakespeare's Hamlet as a Precursor of the Theatre of the Absurd

The Return of Logos: Language and Meaning in Hamlet

햄릿의 자기(Self)의 재형성

Shakespeare and Cervantes Are Dead: The Construction of Fiction and Reality in Hamlet and Don Quixote

Related Papers (3)

The wonder whale: a commodity, a monster, a show and an icon

Ancient whale 'truly weird'

Marine Mammals and Humans