"More than kin and less than kind": Hamlet and his (linguistic) problems

Alireza Mahdipour; Pyeaam Abbasi

doi:10.9744/kata.20.1.1-8

Alireza Mahdipour University of Isfahan
Pyeaam Abbasi University of Isfahan

DOI: https://doi.org/10.9744/kata.20.1.1-8

Keywords: Hamlet, T.S. Eliot, objective correlative, structuralism, post-structuralism

Abstract

T.S. Eliot's "Hamlet and His Problems" (1921) seems to be a pretext to add another erudite concept to the lexis of literary criticism. He charged both Hamlet and Hamlet of lacking "objective correlative." Eliot's own problem with the play, however, seems to arise from his particular epistemological perspective, his formalism, and even his implicit structuralism, and moreover, from his traditional, classic Cartesian modernity that suffers him to hold the notion of subject-object dichotomy in his literary speculations. Hamlet's problem, however, surpasses T. S. Eliot's structuralist view and anticipates the poststructuralist linguistic enigma. Hamlet and Hamlet's problems are, together with the other characters that are caught in the maze of language, linguistic. Hamlet's epistemological/ontological quest for the meaning or the truth are checked, patterned, done and ultimately undone by the language. He cannot find any "objective correlative" for his "particular emotion," for, in the signifying system of the language, all he can think or feel is restrained by "words". He cannot escape from the symbolic order of the language until his death, and "the rest is silence".

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biographies

Alireza Mahdipour, University of Isfahan

Ph. D. student of English literature, University of Isfahan, Department of English

Pyeaam Abbasi, University of Isfahan

Assistant professor of English Literature

Department of English, University of Isfahan

References

Azari, E. (2008). Lacan and the Destiny of Literature. London & New York: Continuum International Publishing Group.
Bloom, H. (1998). Shakespeare the Invention of the Human. USA: The Berkley Publishing Group.
Clemen, W. H. (1951). The Development of Shakespeareâ€™s Imagery. New York: Hill and Wang.
Davies, B. (ed.). (1977). Hamlet. The Alexander Shakespeare. London & Glasgow: Collins Publishers.
Eliot, T. S. (1999). The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism. Hamlet and His Problems. New York: Bartleby.com. 47-50.
Greenburg, B. (2007). T. S. Eliot's Impudence: Hamlet, Objective Correlative, and Formulation. Criticism. 49 (2) 215-239.

Kott, Jan. (1964). Shakespeare Our Contemporary. Translated by Boleslaw Taborski. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc.
Mahdipour, A. (2007). The Existential Idea of Self in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Journal of Faculty of Letters & Humanities. 200. 133-147.
Rivkin J. & Ryan M. (eds.) (1998). Literary Theory: An Anthology. USA: Blackwell Publishers Inc.
Selden, R. (ed.). (2004). The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. Vol. 8: From Formalism to Poststructuralism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
The Holy Bible. (1961). Nashville: Gideons International.
Wells, S. (ed.) (1996). The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.