Shakespeare's Hamlet: Philosophical Perspectives (Oxford Studies in Philosophy and Lit)

__Hamlet__ has long been recognized as concerned with fundamental philosophical issues about identity, responsibility, intimacy, mourning, and agency. How is the play’s address to these issues structured by its distinctively powerful literary-dramatic form and language? What might philosophy have to learn from its mode of address? Is such learning affected by __Hamlet__ being not merely literature, but literature designed to be embodied and voiced on a stage? And what light, in turn, might attention to philosophical themes cast on the play’s development and interest, in other words, does literary criticism gain or lose when tempted to employ literary works as gateways enabling abstract reflection? This book brings together a team of leading literary scholars and philosophers who were invited to probe philosophical dimensions of Shakespeare’s __Hamlet__. Authors diverge in what they focus on: what is shown by Hamlet’s words, what is shown by Hamlet (despite his words), what is shown by __Hamlet__, what is shown by __Hamlet__’s interpreters. “Philosophy in literature” does not, accordingly, possess a consistent meaning throughout this volume. Some essays inquire into Hamlet’s own insights. Others assess the significance of philosophy’s literary-dramatic framing by this play. Still others trace the philosophically relevant underpinnings exposed by historical transformations in __Hamlet__’s reception. Subjectivity, knowledge, sex, grief, self-theatricalization—these are but some of the topics examined in overlapping ways in the emerging symposium. Does philosophy gain or lose when it is embedded within literature or embodied by drama? Does literary criticism gain or lose when it turns to literary works as occasions for abstract reflection? Leading literary scholars and philosophers interrogate philosophical dimensions of Shakespeare's Hamlet with these urgent questions in view. Scholars probe Hamlet's own insights, assess the significance of philosophy's literary-dramatic framing by this play, and trace the philosophically-relevant underpinnings revealed by historical transformations in Hamlet's reception. They focus on the play's thematizations of subjectivity, knowledge, sex, grief, self-theatricalization. Examining Shakespeare's play from a philosophical standpoint sharpens the questions the play itself so famously poses: What counts as a proper response to injustice upon realizing that whatever one does, there can be no undoing of the initial wrong? What do our commitments to the dead amount to? How to persist in infusing significance into action while grasping the degradation of death and our own replaceability? Scholars at the forefront of their fields tackle these and other questions from a wide range of viewpoints, illuminating the central concerns of one of Shakespeare's masterpieces. This Book Assembles A Team Of Leading Literary Scholars And Philosophers To Probe Philosophical Questions That Assert Themselves In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Including Issues About Subjectivity, Knowledge, Sex, Grief, And Self-theatricalization. Edited By Tzachi Zamir. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.