Intro

The focus for our course this semester is William Shakespeare’s Hamlet—very likely the most celebrated, the most studied, and the most iconic work in the canon of Western literature, outside of religious scripture. As you study the text of Hamlet and what it has meant to readers, actors, and critics in the past four hundred years, it begins to seem that there are very few major issues in the study of the humanities that are not somehow encompassed in this play.
I want our study of the play to remain as open as possible to the original contributions of all participants. But I will also offer a structure of topics, readings, exercises, and assignments to introduce perspectives I hope will broaden and deepen our experience of the play. In addition to the general goals of Humanities courses stated above, we will use our study of Hamlet to consider:
• The social contexts of cultural productions: Is the enduring prestige of Hamlet due to its inherent qualities, or to social institutions dependent on distinctions of class, nationality, gender, race, and political ideology?
• The historical contexts of cultural productions: Do we have to understand what Hamlet meant to a 17th-century audience? Is it OK to just concentrate on what we make of it as 21st-century people?
• The technology of cultural representation in old and new media: Is Hamlet still Hamlet when it becomes a movie? A video game? A theme-park ride?
• The concept of performance in modern thought: Is the actor’s and director’s understanding of a text vitally different from that of a critic, historian, or philosopher?
• The application of social theory (such as psychoanalysis or symbolic interactionism) to the humanities: Can Hamlet serve as a guide to how we play our roles in life? Is all the world really a stage?
• The value of art (as distinct from philosophy, social science, etc.) as a way of thinking about life: How does a play convince us that it has a message for us? Do all those strange rules of form, style, and genre really serve a purpose? Should art imitate life, as Hamlet himself seems to insist?