Talk:Critical approaches to Hamlet

A fact from Critical approaches to Hamlet appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 13 August 2007. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that literary critics credit William Shakespeare's Hamlet as a significant contributor to Sigmund Freud's idea of the Oedipus complex?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2007/August.

Wikipedia

WP:BARD Assessment

I rated the article Start/Mid—mostly just so it wouldn't be Unassessed—but I'm not really qualified on the subject matter. If that rating seems inappropriate to you, please do reassess it!--Xover 13:00, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Catholic dimensions and other new bits

The new material looks good. I see that the views are sourced, but might you include whose criticism says what specifically in the notes, even if in a for example, Bradley this, Knights that, etc.? I think a brief explanation of why the ghost in purgatory has a catholic resonance would be useful too. DionysosProteus 09:57, 10 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, the ghost bit needs work. I was tired when I wrote that one. Wrad 15:39, 10 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Lacan?

Did anyone else notice that in the psychoanalysis section, it mentions both Freud and Lacan, and that they had individual analyses of Hamlet. Then, it goes into great detail regarding the Freudian analysis, and does not every again mention Lacan. I'd put it in myself if I were more familiar with Lacan's analysis. 208.81.93.52 (talk) 13:22, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Funnily enough I was reading about the connection between Shakespeare and Lacan last week, so I've just looked it up again. Unfortunately my book doesn't mention Hamlet so I cannot add anything to this article from it. However it does offer a couple of sources, and someone reading this thread at a university library [any takers!?!] might like to look them up:
- Two works by Joel Fineman: "Shakespeare's Perjured Eye" and "The Subjectivity Effect in Western Literay Tradition";
- A series of essays by Cynthia Marshall. (The only such essay cited in my book is "Wound-man: Coriolanus, Gender and the Theatrical Construction of Inferiority.")
AndyJones (talk) 21:52, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Political" context

This material was excised from the Hamlet article for a good reason. Nothing in the section as written has anything to do with a political interpretation of Hamlet. Only one reference, Winstanley's 1921 Hamlet and the Scottish succession, even touches on a political interpretation or context, that is, her theory that Hamlet was written to oppose King James's ascension and support Essex, both of them being portrayed in characteristics of Hamlet. The theory is almost universally rejected, but a variation of it has been proposed by Stuart Kurland. In addition, the other refs are OR when used to support a political interpretation. As it is written, it violates WP:ONEWAY because it is nothing more than an Oxfordian promotion wrapped in a guessing game of who the characters represent supported by antique scholarship, with nothing to do with political context. And the last contention, "Hamlet was given the royal imprimatur, as the king's coat of arms on the frontispiece of the 1604 Hamlet attests," is flat wrong and not supported by the source, which is not RS for this article anyway. Tom Reedy (talk) 04:24, 29 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Move to section where relevant?

At the very end of the section entitled "meta-interpretational," we find mention of the book Hamlet Made Simple and Other Essays in which author David Gontar argues that Hamlet's delay seems due to his suspicion that he is the son of Claudius--and that despite hating this putative uncle, Hamlet delays killing Claudius because it is difficult to murder one's own biological father. Hamlet consequently suffers, in part, a tragedy of self-loathing, being the offspring of a detestable man. I don't know whether David Gontar inserted this comment about his own work, or if someone else did. It deserved to be there, but it's not cited, and Dr. Gontar's book is not named in the references. Gontar's book is sufficiently notable that the paragraph should remain.

Here are my two suggestions. Number one, this interpretation is not meta-interpretational, by any means. It is a direct, central interpretation, and at this point very well known. And it has some convention and authority backing it up, namely the work of Harold Bloom who introduced at least the seed of this idea long before Gontar developed it and took it more seriously. Since it is not a peripheral idea, it should be moved up to the main section concerning "Hamlet's Delay." Second, Gontar's book should be cited in the comment with a reference. If no one else will, and no one objects, I'll do these two tasks.Cdg1072 (talk) 19:09, 27 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I've just moved the paragraph about Gontar's interpretation up to the section on Hamlet's delay. I also edited the paragraph correcting style that was not encyclopedic.Cdg1072 (talk) 06:51, 2 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]