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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... writes Professor Margreta de Grazia . " At the end of the twentieth century , " she adds , " Hamlet continued to possess this strange futurity , still gesturing beyond its most recent site of reception .... " This extraordinary appeal ...
... writes , " utterly listless and unclean , flinging himself on the ground and bespattering his person with foul and filthy dirt . His discolored face and visage smutched with slime denoted foolish and grotesque madness . All he said was ...
... writes that " [ w ] ith such reproaches , he rent the heart of his mother , and redeemed her to walk in the ways of virtue , " we hear Hamlet's much more intense plea that his mother " [ 1 ] et [ not ] the bloat King tempt you again to ...
... writes , " esteemed these his words as nothing ; but men of quick spirits , and such as had a deeper reach " under- stood that " under that kind of folly there lay hidden a great and rare subtlety . " This cloaking of wisdom in the ...
... write into his several versions of Hamlet . This episode is followed by the arrival of Leonhardus ( Laertes ) in Denmark to avenge the death of his father , Corambus . The King and Leonhardus plot to kill Hamlet , with the King ...
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 |