'Hamlet' without Hamlet

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Margreta de GraziaCambridge University PressEdition: Illustrated, 1/11/2007EAN 9780521870252, ISBN10: 0521870259Hardcover, 280 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cmLanguage: EnglishOriginall y published in English'Hamlet' without Hamlet sets out to counter the modern tradition of abstracting the character Hamlet from the play. For over two centuries, Hamlet has been valued as the icon of consciousness: but only by ignoring the hard fact of his dispossession. By admitting that premise, this book brings the play to life around man's relation to land, from graves to estate to empire. Key preoccupations are thereby released, including the gendered imperatives of genealogy, and man's elemental affinity to dust. As de Grazia demonstrates from the 400 years of Hamlet's afterlife, such features have disappeared into the vortex of an interiorized Hamlet, but they remain in the language of the play as well as in the earliest accounts of its production. Once reactivated, a very different Hamlet emerges, one whose thoughts and desires are thickly embedded in the worldly, and otherworldly, matters of the play: a Hamlet within Hamlet.PrefaceHamlet without Hamlet1. Modern Hamlet2. 'Old Mole'the modern Telos and the return to dust3. Empires of world history4. Generation and degeneracy5. Doomsday and domain6. Hamlet's delaySelect bibliography. Show more