Hamlet and the vision of darkness / Rhodri Lewis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lewis, Rhodri, 1976- author.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Hamlet.

Shakespeare, William.

Hamlet (Shakespeare, William).

Physical Description:

xxi, 365 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2017]

Summary:

Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness is a radical new interpretation of the most famous play in the English language. By exploring Shakespeare's engagements with the humanist traditions of early modern England and Europe, Rhodri Lewis reveals a Hamlet unseen for centuries: an innovative, coherent, and exhilaratingly bleak tragedy in which the governing ideologies of Shakespeare's age are scrupulously upended. This book establishes that life in Elsinore is measured not by virtue but by the deceptions and grim brutality of the hunt. It also shows that Shakespeare most vividly represents this reality in the character of Hamlet: his habits of thought and speech depend on the cultures of pretence that he affects to disdain, ensuring his alienation from both himself and the world around him. Lewis recovers a work of far greater magnitude than the tragedy of a young man who cannot make up his mind. He shows that in Hamlet, as in King Lear, Shakespeare confronts his audiences with a universe that received ideas are powerless to illuminate - and where everyone must find their own way through the dark.0A major contribution to Shakespeare studies, this book is required reading for all students of early modern literature, drama, culture, and history.

Contents:

Introduction Hamlet within Hamlet 1

Chapter 1 Hamlet, Humanism, and Performing the Self 13

Humanism, Self-Knowledge, and Public Living 18

Moral Dislocation and the Unsettled Self 27

Chapter 2 Hamlet, Hunting, and the Nature of Things 43

Establishing the Hunt 47

Pursuit 62

Commerce of Cunning 80

Transforming Saxo Grammaticus 92

Faking It: Huntsmen, Hypocrites, and Seeming Virtue 98

Chapter 3 Hamlet as Historian 112

Rights of Memory and the History of the Danes 114

The Dozy Arithmetic of Memory 120

Memory, Reason, and the Eyes of the Mind 129

Remember Me 147

Memory, Recollection, and the ars memoriae 154

Metaphor and Misrepresentation 162

A Slave to What Memory? 169

Chapter 4 Hamlet as Poet 174

A Passionate Speech 178

The Mirror Up to Nature 195

Foul Imaginations 205

Play-within-a- Play 214

Very Like a Poet 219

Chapter 5 Hamlet as Philosopher 238

The Good, the Bad, and the Boethian 242

More Things in Heaven and Earth 253

Being, Nothingness, and Inconsequentiality 266

Dull Revenge 279

Rough-Hewn Providence 284

Conclusion: Shakespearean Tragedy and the Death of Humanism 304.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

9780691166841

0691166846

OCLC:

970396690