Looking for HamletA mysterious, melancholic, brooding Hamlet has gripped and fascinated four hundred years' of readers, trying to "find" and know him as he searches for and avenges his father's name. Setting itself apart from the usual discussions about Hamlet, Hunt here demonstrates that Hamlet is much more than we take him to be. Much more than the sum of his parts--more than just tragic, sexy youth and more than just vain cruelty--Hamlet is a reflection of our own aspirations and neuroses. Looking for Hamlet investigates our many searches for Hamlet, from their origins in Danish mythology through the complex problems of early printed texts, through the centuries of shifting interpretations of the young prince to our own time when Hamlet is more compelling and perplexing than ever before. Hunt presents Hamlet as a sort of missing person, the idealized being inside oneself. This search for the missing Hamlet, Hunt argues, reveals a present absence readers pursue as a means of finding and identifying ourselves. |
From inside the book
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... fact , Hamlet is largely responsible for Shakespeare being the most frequently credited screenwriter in Hollywood . With seventy - five film pro- ductions by the turn of the twenty - first century , Hamlet is second only to Romeo and ...
... fact that it relocates reality from outside the human mind to within it , taking us from a medieval mindset that held reality to be objective , anterior , and superior to human experience , to a modern , or more pre- cisely , an early ...
... fact , it achieves the opposite . One of the implicit claims of this book is that Hamlet is a sort of miracle child , a creature that defies or until quite recently , has defied the universal law that influence fades over time . Though ...
... fact that Horwendil's murder is com- mitted openly , known to all , is significant . It means , of course , that the Amleth leg- end has no need for a private means of revealing the nature of the murder to the hero . The ghost is a post ...
... fact The Spanish Tragedy and Shakespeare's Hamlet share too many ele- ments great and small - a secret murder , a ghost , demands for revenge , feigned madness , the genuine madness of a female character , the hero's delay and self ...
Contents
13 | |
Two The Three Hamlets | 31 |
Relocating Reality in Hamlet | 71 |
Four Dead Son Hamlet | 85 |
Five Contrarians at the Gate | 93 |
A Brief History of Grief | 105 |
Hamlet and Melancholy | 115 |
Eight Hamlet among the Moderns | 129 |
Nine Postmodern Hamlet | 165 |
Ten Looking for Hamlet | 199 |
Bibliographic Essay | 209 |
Index | 223 |