Hamlet and Oedipus
LC Class | PR2807 .J63 1976 |
Hamlet and Oedipus is a study of William Shakespeare's Hamlet in which the title character's inexplicable behaviours are subjected to investigation along psychoanalytic lines.[1]
The study was written by Sigmund Freud's colleague and biographer Ernest Jones, following on from Freud's own comments on the play, as expressed to Wilhelm Fliess in 1897,[2] before being published in Chapter V of The Interpretation of Dreams (1899).
Analysis
In Freud's wake, Jones explains Hamlet's mysterious
Jones' investigation was first published as "
Shakespeare's father
Freud had originally linked the writing of Hamlet (with its oedipal subtext) to the death of Shakespeare's father in 1601, but had to abandon this view when he gave his support to the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship–something Jones always rejected in his study.[6]
Reception
In 1986, the historian Peter Gay described Hamlet and Oedipus as "still controversial", noting that the work has been criticized as "literal-minded and unliterary". Gay considered Hamlet and Oedipus persuasive, but only as a "modest psychoanalytic explanation of Hamlet's hesitation".[7]
See also
References
External links
- The full text of The Œdipus-complex as an Explanation of Hamlet's Mystery: A Study in Motive at Wikisource
- http://www.shakespeare-navigators.com/jones/ A summary of and the complete text of Jones' 1910 essay which expanded into his 1949 book, Hamlet and Oedipus.
- Oedipus and Hamlet (Freud)
- Information at www.answers.com