Showing papers on "Hamlet (place) published in 1990"

Hamlet's Mother and Other Women

Abstract: Carolyn G. Heilbrun's groundbreaking essay "The Character of Hamlet's Mother" was published in 1957 at a time when few critics thought seriously about women's issues in literature. In the years since, Heilbrun has emerged as a feminist leader through her commitment to women's writing and feminist literary critique. Now in a new paperback edition with a new preface by the author, this collection explores feminism in literary studies during the last three decades. By questioning the gender arrangements of society, Heilbrun has helped to transform them. Taken together, these graceful essays demonstrate the consistency and clarity of Heilbrun's vision and her deep respect for the lives of women who write.

Giving up the Ghost in a World of Decay: "Hamlet", Revenge, and Denial

Abstract: He begins to identify achingly with the abused disinterred bones, then learns that one skull belonged to his old playmate, then discovers the funeral of his own beloved, and leaps into the grave with her. This leads to a sort of deathbed conversion. At the brink of death, with all his own sententiae about futility and anonymity still fresh in his ears, Hamlet begins seeking a final serenity within the Christian formula. This emerging attitude has often been interpreted as Hamlet's saving revelation, and as the central truth the play serves to inculcate. Such interpretations are appealing but finally unsatisfactory. Hamlet's attitude toward heaven consistently proves to be an index of how badly he needs belief at any moment; and the graveyard scene expands that pattern to the entire culture, positioning religion as one of the compulsive insanities provoked by the fact of death. And Hamlet's final \"the rest is silence\" (5.2.358) seems potentially disturbing for his religious followers in much the way Jesus' \"Why hast thou forsaken me\" might have been for his.5 Furthermore, it is hard to discern much divine care rewarding Hamlet's conversion, or much Christian benevolence in his own actions; the Denmark of act 5 is hardly a kinder, gentler nation. It is also hard at times to discern the Christianity behind the passivity. Stoicism is of course the last refuge of many a Renaissance hero, but Hamlet's acceptance of his role as a born avenger and a falling sparrow looks less like a positive declaration of faith than like an agnostic yielding to fate, as best one can read it. What Hamlet seems to posit is less a deity to save his soul than a co-author sufficient o legitimize the conversion of his life into a significantly shaped narrative, such that closure becomes a triumph rather than a surrender. God the Father in act 5 proves to be merely an extension (as Freud's theories 216 ROBERT N. WATSON of religion from the early Totem and Taboo to the late Future of an Illusion would predict) of the father's ghost in act 1. If my resistance to the Christian references places me in the critical pitfall Richard Levin calls \"refuting the ending,\" my defense is a kind of tu quoque: to accept the conventional consolations as sufficient is to refute the ending of human life, to misrepresent as comic (however cleverly and appealingly) a plot of rise and fall. Hamlet justifies his passivity with a parsing that in its very absurdity and circularity may be finally all the human mind can \"reasonably\" conclude about death: There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come the readiness is all.

Hamlet : William Shakespeare

Abstract: Hailed by The Times Educational Supplement as "superb", Penguin Critical Studies is a distinguished series of critical essays on the major works of literature. Ideal for students as well as serious readers.

Hamlet As Minister and Scourge and Other Studies in Shakespeare and Milton

Abstract: This collection makes available Fredson Bowers' Shakespearean studies of the 1960s and 1970s. The collection demonstrates that this textual scholar has made a significant contribution to aesthetic criticism as well. Despite their varied origin and occasion, the essays cohere. The first four treat from different points of view the general problems of Shakespeare's ethos and dramatic structure, chiefly considering tragedy but with some attention to comedy. In the following six pieces, the special areas of interest introduced in the earlier, more generalized survey receive specific application in a narrower focus on "Hamlet" and the major incidents of its plot. The next two essays, of special importance, examine the structure and themes of "King Lear" and "King Henry IV, Part I", and the concluding essay draws connections between Hamlet and Milton's Samson. Fredson Bowers holds honorary degrees from the University of Chicago, Brown and Clark universities, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. As well as editing numerous texts, including the "Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe" and "The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker", Bowers has published several books on textual and bibliographic criticism.

Stratford's First Young Company

Abstract: The first so-called 'Young Company' at the Stratford Festival was founded in 1975 by the incoming Artistic Director, Robin Phillips. This essay describes the brief history of that loosely-defined company and analyses their productions of The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Comedy of Errors in 1975 and of Hamlet and The Tempest in 1976, the Festival's first productions of Shakespeare at the Avon Theatre. La premiere «Jeune Compagnie» ainsi appelee a Stratford fut fondee en 1975 par le nouveau Directeur artistique du Festival, Robin Phillips. Cet article esquisse la breve histoire de cette compagnie au mandat tres souple, tout en analysant ses premieres productions shakespeariennes a l'Avon Theatre, soit The Two Gentlemen of Verona et The Comedy of Errors en 1975, et en 1976 Hamlet et The Tempest .

A Rotten Way to Be Wounded: The Tragicomedy of The Sun Also Rises

Abstract: Contents: The Sun's Literary-Critical History - War Wounds and Allusions to Tristram Shandy - Greek Myth Adaptation - Allusions to The Great Gatsby - Brett's Problems, the Falstaffian Mike and Other Lovers - Recibiendo Technique and the Influence of Hamlet - Bill Gorton and the Therapeutic Nature of Jokes.

Shakespeare's Parted Eye: Perception, Knowledge and Meaning in the Sonnets and Plays

Abstract: Contents: Chapters on Shakespeare's sonnets, A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, King Lear. For the teacher and the student in the classroom this book offers an overview of an approach to Shakespeare's sonnets and five of his most frequently studied plays.

Gerhart Hauptmann's Vor Sonnenaufgang: On Alcohol and Poetry in German Naturalist Drama

Abstract: When Karl Marx equates religion with opium in Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie (1844), he captures with quotable brevity a sentiment shared by his poetic contemporaries of the postand often anti-idealist "Vormirz" years. Just as Marx attacks traditional religion for its stultifying effect on social criticism and progress, writers like Georg Btichner and Heinrich Heine criticize similarly deleterious tendencies in the romantic and idealistic poetry of earlier generations. In doing so, they often attribute an inebriating or narcotic effect to such poetry. This is true in Die romantische Schule and in Dantons Tod, for example, but it is especially so in Heine's verse-epic Deutschland. Ein Wintermdrchern, a work coeval with Marx's Hegel critique. There the link of romantic songs and dreams to bouts of drunken delirium fosters critical reflection on the gap between the heady poetry of an earlier age and the sobering realities of political action.' A century later the Marx-disciple Brecht places a similar emphasis on the intoxicating dangers of traditional poetry as part of his campaign against the emotional "fix," against the "berauschte Einfiihlung" of traditional drama's cathartic effect. For by drawing the reader or the audience into sympathetic identification with suffering figures, it hinders critical reflection on the sociopolitical causes of their catastrophes.2 Between Heine and Brecht, Naturalist works, both seminal and typical, also give a prominent place to the motifs of alcohol and poetry. This can be seen in Holz and Schlaf's prose work Papa Hamlet and their drama Die Familie Selicke as well as in Gerhart Hauptmann's dramas Vor Sonnenaufgang and Die Weber. They refer frequently to drunkenness and alc hol abuse. They are also rich in refernces to traditional art and literature, citing r alluding to other works or depicting figures involved in artistic or poetic acts. For all of Naturalism's "realistic" focus, they show an i tens ty of critical and self-conscious interest in h w literature relates to social problems.3 Often these motifs might seem disparate and secondary elements of each workthe alcohol references part of a realistically depicted social milieu, the art references a vehicle for Naturalist polemics. Yet I propose that the works in question relate the two elements to make important statements about poetry's relationship to social and political complexities with Hauptmann's Vor Sonnenaufgang seminal in this respect for German Naturalist drama. These statements are essential to the understanding of each work's message. They are also revealing as to the place of Naturalist drama in the development of nineteenth-century literature toward social realism. By initiating critical reflection on how poetry can resemble alcohol as a means of narcotic flight from social problems, these dramas anticipate -despite Brecht's doubts about Naturalist dramasbasics of his "epic theater."4 This aspect of German Naturalism is generally overlooked or even contested by critics. Marxists and non-Marxists alike have often seen Naturalism's deviation from the line of development linking the Jungdeutschland era of Heine and Marx to Brecht's achievements. They stress its tendency to retreat from its literary revolution into dramatic convention or from its social concern into bourgeois caution: Die Weber with a conventional dramatic

Hamlet, Art and Practicality

Abstract: Throughout Hamlet, the hero shows a persistent fascination with art. This fascination has received remarkably little attention, yet it seems to me one of the key issues of the play. Once we become aware of it, we shall understand the purpose of much that otherwise does not make sense or seems curiously extraneous to this enigmatic drama. This will be particularly the case if we are willing to make our concept of 'art' a large one, so that we can consider under one heading a number of things that are undoubtedly associated in Shakespeare's mind. For example, the way Hamlet sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths as described by him in V.ii can aptly be regarded as the action of an art ist . In this instance, the action is of course practical as well, but the practicality is of a very strange nature if the execution of these courtiers were Hamlet's only aim. He takes the King's commission away from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern while they are asleep, from which he learns that Claudius has asked the King of England instantly to have his head struck off. Hamlet appears to believe, though without firm evidence otherwise provided by the play, that his former friends 'did make love to this employment' (line 5 7 ) , a n d h a s n o c o m p u n c t i o n a b o u t s e n d i n g t h e m t o t h e i r d e a t h . 1 However, from a purely practical point of view, the method which he chooses appears ind i rect and charac te r ized by a sense of d rama and cleverness rather than good sense. Indeed, Hamlet's own words point in this direction. He explains to Horatio that he wrote a new commission, and that before 'I could make a prologue to my brains./ They had begun the play' (lines 30-31). His sense of theatre is such that before he could provide his brains with a prologue, they (i.e. his brains) had commenced writing the play itself. The new commission requests the King of England that