Name: Vala Asha Tidabhai.
Roll No: 41
Semester : 1
Paper no: 1 Renaissance Literature
Topic: Hamlet psychological Approach.
Email id: valaasha10@gmail.com
Submitted by: Smt. S.B. Gardi. Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji
Bhavnagar University,
Department of English.
1)Hamlet Psychological Approach.
*Introduction
:-
Hamlet was written by William
Shakespeare. He was born on 23rd April ,1564 at Stafford on the
bank of the river Avon. Shakespeare’s later poetical work is the songs is
original; it is almost certain that Shakespeare liker burns, used popular songs
is of many of his lyrics, most of it of the highest quality. it various from
the nonsense-verses in hamlet and king Lear to the graceful “Othello fear no
more heat of the sun” in Cymbeline ‘Hamlet’ is a great tragedy.
Psychological criticism
deals with a work of literature primarily an expression, in an indirect and
fictional form of the state of mind and the structure of personality of the
individual author. this approach emerged in the early decades of the nineteenth
century , as part of the romantic replacement of earlier mimetic and pragmatic
views by an expressive view of the nature of literature.
One of the best know
books in this mode is hamlet and Oedipus by the psychoanalyst Ernest Jones. Jones
proposes that Hamlet’s conflict is “an echo of a similar one in Shakespeare
himself” and goes on to account for the audience’s powerful and continued response to the play, over
many centuries as a result of the repressed oedipal conflict that is shared by
all men. by 1827 Thomas Carlyle could say that the usual question “with the
best of our own critics at present “is one “mainly of a psychological sort, to be
answered by discovering and delineating the peculiar nature of the poet from
the poetry.
*Hamlet: The Oedipus Complex:-
Although Freud himself
made some application of his theories to and literature , it remained for an
English disciple, the psycho analyst Ernest jones to provide the first full
scale psychoanalytic treatment of a major literary work. jone’s hamlet and
Oedipus, originally published as an essay in the American journal of psychology
an 1910,was later revised and enlarged.
Jones
bases his argument on the thesis that hamlet’s much debated delay in killing
his uncle, Claudius is to be explained
in terms of internal rather than external circumstances and that “play is mainly concerned with a hero’s
unavailing fight against what can only be called a disordered mind.” Jones
points out that no really satisfying argument has ever been substantiated for
the idea that hamlet revenges his father’s murder as quickly as practicable Shakespeare
makes Claudius’s quilt as well as hamlet’s duty perfectly clear from the outset
if we are to trust the words of the ghost and the gloomy insights of the hero
himself. the fact is however , that hamlet does not fulfill this duty until
absolutely force to do so by physical circumstances and even then only after gratitude ,his mother , is dead
,Jones also elucidates the strong misogyny that hamlet displays though tout the
play , especially as it is directed against Ophelia , and his almost physical
revolution to sex .all of this adds up to a classic example of the
neurotically repressed Oedipus complex.
his
view of Claudius ,on the other hand , represents hamlets represents hostility
towards his father as a rival for his mother ‘s affection . this new
king-father is the symbolic perpetrator of the very deeds towards which the son
is impelled by his own unconscious motives;murder of his father and incest with
his mother . hamlet because to do so he must in a psychological sense , kill
himself . his delay and frustration in trying to fulfill the ghost’s demand for
vengeance may therefore be explained by the fact that , as Jones puts it, the “thought
of incest and parricide combines is too intolerable to be borne . one part of
him tries to carry out the task , the
other flinches inexorably from the thought of it.
Norman N, Holland neatly summed up the reasons
both for hamlet’s delay and also for our three hundred year in comprehending
hamlet’s true motives;
Now what do critics mean when they say that
hamlet cannot act because of his Oedipus complex ? the argument is very simple
, very elegant , one people over the centuries have been unable to say why
hamlet delays in killing the men who
murdered his father and married his mother. two every Child wants to do just
exactly that.three hamlet delays because he cannot punish Claudius for doing
what he himself wished to do as a child
and unconsciously steel wishes to do he would be punishing him self four the
fact this wish is unconscious explains why people could not explain hamlets
delay.
curiously Freud points to the fact of
historical difference in comparing Oedipus and hamlet even while he collapse them together as much the
same character having roots in the same soil.
*hamlet :-
Any discussion of hamlet
should acknowledge the enormous body of
excellence commentary that sees the play as valuable primary for its moral
and philosophical insight little more can be
done here than to summarize the most famous of such interpretation. some
explain hamlet has as an idea list temperamentally unsuited to life in a world
people by fallible creatures.
Through there are in hamlet more direct
utterances of the poets in most spiritual life than in thoroughly disengaging
his hero’s figure ,and making it an independent entity in the course of the
drama , a rift seems to open between the shall of the actions and its kernel.
But
Shakespeare , with his consummate instinct , managed to find an advantage precisely in this discrepancy
, and to turn it to account his hamlet believes in the ghost and ___ doubts .
he accepts the summons to the dead of vengeance and delays. Much of the
originality of the figure, and of the drama
as a whole , springs almost inevitably from this discrepancy between the
mediaeval character of the fable and its renaissance hero , who is so deep and
many sided that he has almost a modern air.
The
figure of hamlet, as it at last shaped itself in Shakespeare’s imagination and
came to life in his drama , is one of the very few immortal figures of art and
poetry , which , like Cervantes ‘ don Quixote , exactly its contemporary , and
Goethe’s Faust of two centuries later, present to generation after generation
problems to brood over and enigmas to solve . if we compare the two great
figures of Hamlet
(1604) and Don Quixote(1605) ,we find two.
Shakespeare at first conceived hamlet as a
youth . in the probably nineteen . it accords with this age that he should be a
students at Written berg; young men at that time began and ended their university
course much earlier than in our days . it accords with this age that his mother
should address him as “boy” and that the word
“young” should be continually prefixed to his name , not merely to
distinguish him from his father . the
king , too, in the early edition currently , addresses him as “son hamlet” and
finally his mother is still young enough to arouse or at least to unable
Claudius to pretend the passion which has such terrible results, hamlet’s
speech to his mother…..
“ at your young
age The hey-day of the blood is tale ,it’s humble and waits upon the
judgement,”
Does not occur in the 1603 edition in the order
edition , in the older edition, the first gravedigger says that the skull of
the jester yo rick has lain a dozen years in the earth ; in the edition of 1604
this is changed to twenty three years . here , too it is explicable indicated
that hamlet , who as a child knew yo rick , is not thirty years old ; for the
gravedigger first states that he took to his trade on the very day on which
prince ‘hamlet’ was born , and a little
later adds : I have been sexton here , man boy , thirty years . it accords with
this that the player king now mentions thirty years as the time that has elapsed
since his marriage with the queen , and that Ophelia speaks of hamlet as the
“unmatched form of blown youth.” The process of thought in Shakespeare’s mind
is evident . he admired his great father , honored his beautiful mother ,
passionately loved the charming Ophelia , thought nobly of human kind , and
especially of woman . if his mother has been able to forgot his father and
marry this man, what is woman worth ? and what is life worth ?
Hence his words to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ; “ I have of late but
where fore I know not-lost all my mirth” hamlet’s faith and trust in human kind
are shattered before the ghost appears to him, from the moment when his
father’s spirit communicates to him a far more appalling facts of the situation ,his whole inner man is in wild
revolt his doubt as to the trust worthiness of the ghost leads to the
performance of the play within the play , which proves the kings guilt . his
feeling of his own unfitness for his
task leads to continued procrastination.
“ his
name “ says victor Hugo , “ is as the name on a woodcut of Albert Durers.; melancholia the bat flits over hamlet’s head
; at his feet sits knowledge , with globe and compass, and love , with an
hour-glass ; while behind him, on the horizon , rests a giant sun , which only
serves to make the sky about him darker
. “but from another point of view , hamlet’s nature is that of the hurricanes a
thing of wrath and fury, and tempestuous scorn, whole world clean.
*Conclusion :-
Tragedy indeed does not make us choose
between an emotional and visceral and an awareness of difference . instead , it
deepens our understanding of the past and of our lives .
Hamlet’s fulfills the technical requirements of the revenge play as well
as the silent requirements of a
classical tragedy ; that is ; it shows a person of heroic proportion going
down to defeat under circumstance too powerful for him to cope with but this
will not keep them from recognizing the play as one of the most searching
artistic treatments of the problems and conflict that from so large a part of
the human condition.
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