A05 Criticism Flashcards
“Hamlet has been primarily a political play…”
“Hamlet has been primarily a political play enacting the possibilities of decent from various forms of totalitarianism”
Taken from Intro
“Men may go mad for a number of reasons, including mental and spiritual crisis’ but women’s madness is relentlessly associated with heir bodies and erotic desires”
Who said this
Elaine Showalter
What did E.K Chambers suggest?
“His thoughts slip away from the plain issue and lose themselves in a bitter contest of all things”
What did Carolyn Heilburn suggest? What essay did she write? When?
She wrote ‘hamlets mother’, 1957
She argued that Gertrude never knew about the kings murder and notes how hamlet as a play was written by and is criticised by men
Other than the Oedipus complex what did Freud suggest of Hamlet?
He notes how the play is built on hamlets hesitations over fulfilling the task of revenge but the text offers no reason for his hesitation.
Hamlet proved with the murder of Polonius and the Machiavellian execution of Rosencrantz and guildenstern that he has the ability to take action and so Freud concludes that procrastination of Claudius murder has an unconscious origin
“Overwhelmed with the magnitude of his own purpose”
Who said this?
Voltaire
What was Samuel Coleridge’s criticism?
He suggested that Shakespeare urges us to act and not delay
What is the objective correlative?
Who’s criticism is this?
T.S Elliot
Hamlet overreacts when the gravity of the grievance is put into context
What did Thomas Hobbs suggest?
When was he present?
1605
He wrote that human beings are animals, scared and illogical - with a constant and irrotational feeling of threat from our neighbours
- this instinct makes us what to attack or defend at all time
