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Hamlet and Counter-Humanism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Ronald Knowles
Ronald Knowles*
Affiliation:
University of Reading
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Abstract

This essay interprets the question of subjectivity in Hamlet by reappraising Renaissance skepticism and by reexamining the medieval debate concerning the misery of man's existence, and the Renaissance celebration of man. A central concern is the significance of the commonplace in humanist rhetoric and dialectic, by which Stoic and Christian thought depreciates passion. In his anguish Hamlet discovers a unique subjectivity as he attempts to reject the wisdom of tradition. But the nature of thought cannot be separated from the nature of the mind that thinks, and Hamlet's selfhood capitulates to the role.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , Winter 1999 , pp. 1046 - 1069
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1999

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