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This course addresses various academic issues arising from a reflective encounter with the tragedy Hamlet by William Shakespeare. This is wide-ranging in scope because Hamlet also serves as an extended case study for allowing students to encounter and explore different philosophical standpoints on specific aspects and themes raised by this play. Hamlet is claimed to be the second most studied English language text second only to the Bible. The play itself is reported to have been in performance somewhere in the world continuously since 1601 This course invites students to explore both the contents of this play, its plotline, characterisation and figurative language, as well as a selection of theoretical perspectives upon its implications as developed by a selection of eminent theorists ranging from Hegel through to Hans Gadamer, Adorno and Carl Schmitt and contemporary feminist readings. Only extracts that are relatively straightforward and open to a clear paraphrase will be selected. These short extracts will also be summarised in lectures to aid with their comprehension at undergrad class level. These extracts do not require a full understanding of the theorist’s overall positions and students will be provided with a basic summary and paraphrase in the lectures aid comprehension. Students will be required to read, discuss and write about the full text of this play together with an assessment of the perspectives taken by a variety of commentators and critics using a wide range of texts in philosophy and critical theory. In particular, students will explore the requirements of a critical analysis of competing interpretations of the significance of the entire play, as well as the character and centrality to be afforded to existentialist issues development by romanticism. Students will also explore constitutional issues developed by realist approaches of Carl Schmitt and others, contrasting these with the psychological/psychoanalytical questions about Hamlet as developed by Lacan, Jones and others. In this respect, Hamlet serves as an extended running case study to illustrate both the character and possible limits of a range of interpretive standpoints and theoretical positions. Students will also address some literary and linguistic dimensions of this play including the role and challenges of its figurative language operating as literary devices vital to the expression of a range of sometimes enigmatic meanings.
This anthology, collecting twenty-one most-assigned plays- seven comedies, eight tragedies, four English history plays, and two romances- as well as all of the sonnets in early authoritative texts newly edited, offers the core of Shakespeare's creative achievement. This third edition adds, to the revised introductory essay, two new opening essays- General Textual Introduction, and The Theater of Shakespeare’s Time. Important materials are attached in the appendices, including maps, documents, timelines, genealogies, comparative scenes and poems, etc. This third edition also provides a digital edition with the contents of the complete print book.
This anthology, collecting ten plays- Titus Abdribucys, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Timon of Athens, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus- offers the core of Shakespeare’s creative achievement in the genre of tragedies. This third edition adds, to the revised introductory essay, two new opening essays- General Textual Introduction, and The Theater of Shakespeare’s Time. Important materials are attached in the appendices, including maps, documents, timelines, genealogies, comparative scenes and poems, etc. This third edition also provides a digital edition with the contents of the complete print book.
Hamlet is a tragedy by Shakespeare, first published in 1603. It tells the story of Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, who revenged against the murderers responsible for his father’s death. The play has endured popularity for hundreds of years for its intricate plot, rich characterizations, and thematic depth. Hamlet is often considered a pinnacle of Elizabethan drama, who is considered a reflection of the anxieties and complexities of the Elizabethan era, mirroring the political intrigue and power struggles of the royal court. This edition includes an overview of Shakespeare's life, world, and theater, a note on the sources from which Shakespeare derived Hamlet, as well as commentaries and recommended readings.
This book provides an analysis of Shakespeare’s tragedy in terms of the historical situation of its creation. Schmitt argues that the significance of Shakespeare’s work hinges on its ability to integrate history in the form of the taboo of the queen and the deformation of the figure of the avenger. He uses this interpretation to develop a theory of myth and politics that serves as a cultural foundation for his concept of political representation. More than literary criticism or historical analysis, the book lays out a comprehensive theory of the relationship between aesthetics and politics that responds to alternative ideas developed by Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno.
This book, a landmark work on the philosophy of humanistic studies, establishes the field of philosophical hermeneutics. Exploring the nature of knowledge, the book rejects traditional quasi-scientific approaches to establishing cultural meaning that were prevalent after the war. In arguing that truth and method acted in opposition to each other, it examines the ways in which historical and cultural circumstance fundamentally influenced human understanding. This is an approach that would become hugely influential in the humanities and social sciences and remains so to this day in the work of Jurgen Habermas and many others.
This book is the only English edition of Hegel’s Aesthetics, composed as lectures in the 1820s, and published posthumously in 1835, in which Hegel gives full expression to his seminal theory of art. He surveys the history of art from ancient India, Egypt, and Greece through to the Romantic movement of his own time, criticizes major works, and probes their meaning and significance. Part One considers the general nature of art. Part Two provides a sort of history or art, divided into three periods called Symbolic, Classical, and Romantic. Part Three deals individually with architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and literature.
This book is an English translation of the posthumous magnum opus of Theodor Adorno who is the foremost thinker of the Frankfurt School, the influential group of German thinkers that fled to the US in the 1930s. It is the culmination of his lifetime's investigation, an attempt to overcome the generally recognized failing of aesthetics- its externality to its object, meaning to breach this externality of aesthetics to art. Analysing the sublime, the ugly and the beautiful, Adorno shows how such concepts frame and distil human experience and that it is human experience that ultimately underlies aesthetics.
