Shakespeare's Hamlet: A Search For Meaning

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for meaning. At the same time the central focus of the essay will be to see how different critical approaches focus on the central themes in the play.
The figure of Hamlet has been the object of contemporary literary and philosophical criticism for an important reason. Hamlet represents the archetypal existential male searching for meaning in a world that has apparently become insane. Faced with the perversity of his father's murder and mother's betrayal, Hamlet is a tortured individual who is searching for psychological as well as philosophical equilibrium. This has some very obvious correspondence to the twentieth century and the advent of modernism.
Modernism was essentially a questioning of established views of human nature and society. The contemporary correspondences of Hamlet's questioning of the authority structure of his world were not lost on many artists and theorists. Hamlets crisis of faith and interrogation of self is also a prominent aspect that is explored ...

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from Freud and the repressed unconscious to later views by Lacan.
Walter Kaufmann's book, From Shakespeare to Existentialism: Studies in Poetry, Religion, and Philosophy (Kaufmann) provides a good overview of the philosophical development of existential philosophy. It provides an essential background to the rationale behind Existentialism and includes a collection of essays on Freud, Jaspers, Nietzsche, Goethe and Heidegger. Importantly, the book provides a good overview of the link between Shakespeare and existentialism in a chapter entitled, Shakespeare: between Socrates and Existentialism. The author also has an interesting view of the relationship of Shakespeare's Hamlet to other ...

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