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Hamlet And His Problems
"Hamlet and His Problems" is an essay written by T. S. Eliot in 1919 that offers a critical reading of ''Hamlet''. The essay first appeared in Eliot's '' The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism'' in 1920. It was later reprinted by Faber & Faber in 1932 in '' Selected Essays, 1917-1932''.Eliot, T. S. Selected Essays. London: Faber and Faber, 1964. Eliot's critique gained attention partly due to his claim that ''Hamlet'' is "most certainly an artistic failure." Eliot also popularised the concept of the objective correlative—a mechanism used to evoke emotion in an audience—in the essay. The essay is also an example of Eliot's use of what became known as new criticism.Eliot, T. S. "Hamlet and His Problems." The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1921. __TOC__ Content Eliot begins the essay by stating that the primary problem of ''Hamlet'' is actually the play itself, with its main character being only a secondary issue. Eliot goes on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Critical Approaches To Hamlet
From its premiere at the turn of the 17th century, ''Hamlet'' has remained Shakespeare's best-known, most imitated, and most analyzed play . The character of Hamlet played a critical role in Sigmund Freud's explanation of the Oedipus complex. Even within the narrower field of literature, the play's influence has been strong. As Foakes writes, "No other character's name in Shakespeare's plays, and few in literature, have come to embody an attitude to life ... and been converted into a noun in this way." History Renaissance period Interpretations of ''Hamlet'' in Shakespeare's day were very concerned with the play's portrayal of madness. The play was also often portrayed more violently than in later times. The play's contemporary popularity is suggested both by the five quartos that appeared in Shakespeare's lifetime and by frequent contemporary references (though at least some of these could be to the so-called '' Ur-Hamlet''). These allusions suggest that by the early Jacobean pe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sources Of Hamlet
The sources of ''Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', a tragedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601, trace back as far as pre-13th century. The generic "hero-as-fool" story is so old and is expressed in the literature of so many cultures that scholars have hypothesized that it may be Proto-Indo-Europeans, Indo-European in origin. A Amleth, Scandinavian version of the story of Hamlet (called Amleth or Amlóði, which means "mad" or "not sane" in Old Norse) was put into writing around 1200 AD by Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus in his work ''Gesta Danorum'' (the first full history of Denmark). It is from this work that Shakespeare borrowed to create ''Hamlet''. Similar accounts are found in the Icelandic ''Hrólfs saga kraka, Saga of Hrolf Kraki'' and the Roman legend of Lucius Junius Brutus, both of which feature heroes who pretend to be insane in order to get revenge. A reasonably accurate version of Saxo's story was translated into French in 1570 by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Essays In Literary Theory
An essay ( ) is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a Letter (message), letter, a term paper, paper, an article (publishing), article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal and informal: formal essays are characterized by "serious purpose, dignity, logical organization, length," whereas the informal essay is characterized by "the personal element (self-revelation, individual tastes and experiences, confidential manner), humor, graceful style, rambling structure, unconventionality or novelty of theme," etc. Essays are commonly used as literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. Almost all modern essays are written in prose, but works in Poetry, verse have been dubbed essays (e.g., Alexander Pope's ''An Essay on Criticism'' and ''An Essay on Man''). While brevity usual ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lady Macbeth
Lady Macbeth is a leading character in William Shakespeare's tragedy ''Macbeth'' (). As the wife of the play's tragic hero, Macbeth (a Scottish nobleman), Lady Macbeth goads her husband into committing regicide, after which she becomes queen of Scotland. Some regard her as becoming more powerful than Macbeth when she does this, because she is able to manipulate him into doing what she wants. After Macbeth becomes a murderous tyrant, she is driven to madness by guilt over their crimes and kills herself offstage. Lady Macbeth is a powerful presence in the play, most notably in the first two acts. Following the murder of King Duncan, however, her role in the plot diminishes. She becomes an uninvolved spectator to Macbeth's plotting and a nervous hostess at a banquet dominated by her husband's hallucinations. Her sleepwalking scene in the fifth act is a turning point in the play, and her line "Out, damned spot!" has become a phrase familiar to many speakers of the English langu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Macbeth
''The Tragedy of Macbeth'', often shortened to ''Macbeth'' (), is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, estimated to have been first performed in 1606. It dramatises the physically violent and damaging psychological effects of political ambitions and power. It was first published in the Folio of 1623, possibly from a prompt book, and is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy. Scholars believe ''Macbeth'', of all the plays that Shakespeare wrote during the reign of King James I, contains the most allusions to James, patron of Shakespeare's acting company. In the play, a brave Scottish general named Macbeth receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to violence by his wife, Macbeth murders the king and takes the Scottish throne for himself. Then, racked with guilt and paranoia, he commits further violent murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion, soon becoming a tyrannical ruler. The bloo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gertrude (Hamlet)
In William Shakespeare's play ''Hamlet'', Gertrude is Hamlet's mother and Queen of Denmark. Her relationship with Hamlet is somewhat turbulent, since he resents her marrying her husband's brother Claudius after he murdered the king (young Hamlet's father, King Hamlet). Gertrude reveals no guilt in her marriage with Claudius after the recent murder of her husband, and Hamlet begins to show signs of jealousy towards Claudius. According to Hamlet, she scarcely mourned her husband's death before marrying Claudius. Her name may derive from Gertrude of Bavaria, who was Queen of Denmark in the late 12th century. Role in the play Gertrude is first seen in Act 1 Scene 2 as she tries to cheer Hamlet over the loss of his father, begging him to stay at home rather than going back to school in Wittenberg. Her worry over him continues into the second act, as she sides with King Claudius in sending Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to raise the spirits of her son. Also, rather than ascribin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ur-Hamlet
The ''Ur-Hamlet'' (the German prefix ''wikt:ur-, Ur-'' means "original") is a play by an unknown author, thought to be either Thomas Kyd or William Shakespeare. No copy of the play, dated by scholars to the second half of 1587, survives today. The play was staged in London, more specifically at The Theatre in Shoreditch as recalled by Elizabethan author Thomas Lodge. It includes a character named Hamlet; the only other known character from the play is a ghost who, according to Thomas Lodge in his 1596 publication ''Wits Misery and the Worlds Madnesse'', cries "Hamlet, revenge!"Reference to early Hamlet play in Lodge's Wit's Misery, 1596 British Library: Lodge, Thomas. ''Wits Miserie and the Worlds Madnesse: Discovering the Devils Incarnat of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Spanish Tragedy
''The Spanish Tragedy'', or ''Hieronimo is Mad Again'' is an Elizabethan tragedy written by Thomas Kyd between 1582 and 1592. Highly popular and influential in its time, ''The Spanish Tragedy'' established a new genre in English theatre: the revenge play or revenge tragedy. The play contains several violent murders and personification, personifies Revenge as its own character. ''The Spanish Tragedy'' is often considered to be the first mature Elizabethan drama, a claim disputed with Christopher Marlowe's ''Tamburlaine'', and was parodied by many Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights, including Marlowe, William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. Many elements of ''The Spanish Tragedy,'' such as the play-within-a-play used to trap a murderer and a ghost intent on vengeance, appear in Shakespeare's ''Hamlet.'' (Thomas Kyd is frequently proposed as the author of the hypothetical ''Ur-Hamlet'' that may have been one of Shakespeare's primary sources for ''Hamlet''.) Performance Early perfo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Kyd
Thomas Kyd (baptised 6 November 1558; buried 15 August 1594) was an English playwright, the author of ''The Spanish Tragedy'', and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama. Although well known in his own time, Kyd fell into obscurity until 1773 when Thomas Hawkins, an early editor of ''The Spanish Tragedy'', discovered that Thomas Heywood, in his ''Apologie for Actors'' (1612), attributed the play to Kyd. A hundred years later, scholars in Germany and England began to shed light on his life and work, including the controversial finding that he may have been the author of a ''Hamlet'' play pre-dating Shakespeare's, which is now known as the '' Ur-Hamlet''. Early life Thomas Kyd was the son of Francis and Anna Kyd. There are no records of the day he was born, but he was baptised in the church of St Mary Woolnoth in the Ward of Langborn, Lombard Street, London on 6 November 1558. The baptismal register at St Mary Woolnoth carries this entry: "Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Sorrows Of Young Werther
''The Sorrows of Young Werther'' (; ), or simply ''Werther'', is a 1774 epistolary novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, which appeared as a revised edition in 1787. It was one of the main novels in the ''Sturm und Drang'' period in German literature, and influenced the later Romanticism, Romantic movement. Goethe, aged 24 at the time, finished ''Werther'' in five and a half weeks of intensive writing in January to March 1774. It instantly placed him among the foremost international literary celebrities and was among the best known of his works. The novel was inspired by Goethe's personal life, and involving love triangle, triangular relationships of real people. One triangular relationship involved Goethe, Christian Kestner, and Charlotte Buff (who married Kestner); and the other involved Goethe, Peter Anton Brentano, Maximiliane Brentano, Maximiliane von La Roche (who married Brentano), and Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem. Jerusalem died by suicide on the night of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Faber & Faber
Faber and Faber Limited, commonly known as Faber & Faber or simply Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, C. S. Lewis, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel Beckett, Philip Larkin, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Milan Kundera and Kazuo Ishiguro. Founded in 1929, in 2006 the company was named the KPMG Publisher of the Year. Faber and Faber Inc., formerly the American branch of the London company, was sold in 1998 to the Holtzbrinck company Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG). Faber and Faber ended the partnership with FSG in 2015 and began distributing its books directly in the United States. History Faber and Faber began as a firm in 1929, but originated in the Scientific Press, owned by Sir Maurice and Lady Gwyer. The Scientific Press derived much of its income from the weekly magazine ''The Nursing Mirror''. The Gwyers' desire to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship
''Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship'' () is the second novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, published in 1795–96. Plot The novel is in eight books. The main character Wilhelm Meister undergoes a journey of self-realization. The story centers upon Wilhelm's attempt to escape what he views as the empty life of a bourgeois businessman. After a failed romance with the theater, Wilhelm commits himself to the mysterious Tower Society. Book One (1) The housekeeper Barbara is waiting for her mistress, the actress Mariane, to return from her performance at the theater. When she arrives, Mariane ignores the presents from her suitor, Norberg, who is due to arrive in 14 days. Wilhelm, whom she loves despite his poor prospects, arrives, and they embrace. (2) The next morning Wilhelm argues with his mother about his obsession with the theater. They reminisce about the puppet show that his mother put on twelve years prior at Christmas. On account of the play (David & Goliath) Wilhelm beca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
