新历史主义解读《哈姆雷特》6926683教学文稿.doc

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外国语学院
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英语（师范）
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新历史主义解读《哈姆雷特》

New Historicist Reading of Hamlet

A Thesis Submitted
to School of Foreign Languages
Huaiyin Normal University
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts

By
Liu Lu
Supervisor：
Xu Xiaobing
May 10, 2013

此文档仅供学习和交流

Acknowledgements

I want to express my appreciation to many who supported my efforts in writing this dissertation during past few months.
I am greatly indebted to Prof. Ms. Xu who patiently helped me and gave me a lot of useful information. It took her a large amount of time to read and improve my paper. Without her help, I would have failed to finish my paper. I am deeply impressed by her hardworking spirit.
Hearty thanks should also be given to Professor Zhang Xiuguo, who has offered the course Essay Writing that tell us how to write a well-formed thesis.
Special thanks should be extended my classmates who show their kind encouragement and useful suggestions to me during my writing process.

Abstract

Hamlet is regarded as the peak of Shakespeare’s artistic creation. From then on, the play has been studied by a large number of literary scholars, many of whom hold various opinions about the text, so-called “there are one thousand Hamlets in one thousand readers’ minds”. The objective of this thesis is to disclose the relationship between Hamlet and its historical context by applying the major theories of New Historicism, especially the New Historicist dictum of “historicity of text and textuality of history”. Based on New Historicism, the thesis examines the text from three aspects: firstly, Shakespeare’s creational background of Hamlet; secondly, the influence of the historical context on Hamlet which makes the play a representation of the Elizabethan era and the specific effect of Hamlet on the construction of the historical context of the Elizabethan era. Last，the important role playing in the development of drama and culture. Thus，the new historicist reading of Hamlet will highlight some cultural aspects of the text.
Keywords: Hamlet; Shakespeare; New Historicism；historicity；textuality

摘要

《哈姆雷特》是莎士比亚艺术创作的巅峰之作。时至今日，莎翁评论家依然对该剧众说纷纭，真所谓“有一千个读者就有一千个哈姆雷特”。本文运用“文本的历史性和历史的文本性”这一新历史主义最重要的理论，挖掘《哈姆雷特》与它所产生的社会历史环境间的“对话性”关系。本文从三个层面解析文本：首先探讨莎士比亚创作《哈姆雷特》的历史背景；其次《哈姆雷特》反映了伊丽莎白时代的特定历史背景，揭示历史对文本的影响；最终指出《哈姆雷特》在英国戏剧和文化发展中所起的重大历史作用。因此，本文将有助于文本的文化层面的解读。

关键词：《哈姆雷特》；莎士比亚；新历史主义；历史性；文本性

Contents

1. Introduction 1
2. An Introduction to New Historicism 2
2.1 The definition of New Historicism 2
2.2 Major theories of New Historicism 2
3. Hamlet—the Product of Shakespeare’s Negotiation with the Historical Context 4
3.1 The dynamic role Shakespeare played in creating Hamlet 4
3.1.1 Shakespeare, a secret Catholic sympathizer 4
3.1.2 Shakespeare’s interest in mental problems 5
3.2 The submissive role Shakespeare played in creating Hamlet 7
4. Hamlet—A Realistic Representation of the Society in the Elizabethan Era 8
4.1 A brief account of the religious and social background of the Elizabethan era 9
4.2 Characters in Hamlet: typical figures of the Elizabethan era 10
4.2.1The role of Hamlet in the text 10
4.2.2The role of Fortinbras in the text 11
5. The Historical Power of Hamlet 11
5.1 Dramatic level 12
5.2 Cultural level 13
6. Conclusion 14
Works Cited 16

1. Introduction
Shakespeare’s Hamlet has aroused hot discussions among many critics in all ages. From the early 17th century, the play was famous for its ghost and vivid dramatization of melancholy and insanity, leading to a procession of mad courtiers and ladies in Jacobean and Caroline drama. This view changed drastically in the 18th century, when critics regarded Hamlet as a hero—a pure, brilliant young man thrust into unfortunate circumstances. For example, Gilbert Murray said in his “Hamlet and Orestes” that “The things that thrill and amaze us in Hamlet ... but things belong to the old stories and the old magic rites” (171). By the 19th century, literary criticism came to focus more on character and less on plot. In the 20th century, criticism branched in several directions, discussed in context and interpretation. However, few critics pay much attention to its historical background. The author was invoked by them into a serious thinking about the specific relationship between Hamlet and its historical background. Is Hamlet deeply influenced by the historical background? Does it have some influence on the history in return? And how did Shakespeare create such a play at that particular time? New Historicism offers a perspective for author’s thinking because “the relationship between history and text remain in the center of the New Historicist arguments” (Zhu G 260). The theories of New Historicism would provide me with wider and firmer basis to make a systematic study on the relationship between Hamlet and its historical context, which in this specific aspect, could be more in depth than the previous studies. The author would like to divide her dissertation into mainly four parts. In chapter 1, the author would give a brief introduction is given to New Historicism and its major theories, especially those which are feasible for the research on Hamlet to offer a theoretical basis for my research. Author would focus on the author, Shakespeare in chapter 2, applying some theories of New Historicism such as “social energy” and “negotiation” to analyze how Shakespeare produced Hamlet. The next two chapters deal with the relationship between the text Hamlet and the historical context of the Elizabethan Era with the help of the well-known New Historicist dictum of “historicity of texts” and “textuality of history” separately. In chapter 3, the author would discuss the influence of history on the text which makes the play a realistic recording of the Elizabethan Era. And the author would discuss in chapter 4 the influence of the text on the historical context—the historical power of Hamlet. On the whole, the author would do a research on Shakespeare’s Hamlet from the perspective of New Historicism in order to show the important value of this play to analyze inter-influence between the play and the historical context of the Elizabethan Era, and to approach again to the relationship between history and text.

2. An Introduction to New Historicism
2.1 The definition of New Historicism
According to the New World Encyclopedia, “New Historicism is an approach to literary criticism and literary theory based on the premise that a literary work should be considered a product of the time, place, and historical circumstances of its composition rather than as an isolated work of art or text”. New Historicism suggests literature must be studied and interpreted within the context of both the history of the author and the history of the critic. New Historicists aim simultaneously to understand the work through its historical context and to understand cultural and intellectual history through literature, which documents the new discipline of the history of ideas. Unlike previous historical criticism, which limited itself to simply demonstrating how a work reflected its time, it evaluates how the work is influenced by the time in which the author wrote it. It also examines the social sphere in which the author moved the psychological background of the writer, and the books and theories that may have influenced him or her. In New Historicists’ eyes, “a text can have neither a unified ideology nor an entirely aesthetic function” (Colebrook 24-25).
2.2 Major theories of New Historicism
New Historicism borrows the “Power Theory” from the famous Post-Structuralist Michel Foucault to analyze in depth the detailed relations between history and text. In Foucault’s theory, power refers the relations of domination and resistance which saturate our social, political and cultural relations, but it can also refer to the ways in which power is a productive, even pleasurable, part of our existence. It is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere (Foucault 93). Obviously, “power” here has a much broader application than the words like “politics” and “economy”, which are used by the traditional historicism. “Power also needs to have subversion, otherwise it would be without the opportunity to justify itself, and to make itself visible as power” (Brannigan 8). As a result, certain text could be subversive to some extent, in the interest of power. Foucault's principal interest is how power diffuses itself in systems of authority and how it affects of truth produced within discourses which in themselves are neither true nor false.
In New Historicists’ opinion, literary texts are placed in the specific historical context and related to other non-literary texts which constructed within other specific historical context; similarly, history is regarded as a text of interrelated contexts. “Different New Historicists may have different inclinations to historicity and sexuality” (Zhu G 260). This is just the famous New Historicist dictum of “historicity of text and textuality of history”, which based on the New Historicist Louis Montrose’s theory. In Louis Montrose’s most famous dictum, the new orientation to history in literary studies may be characterized as a dynamic dialogue between literature and history and it has a reciprocal concern with “the historicity of texts and the textuality of history”. History can influence text and in the meanwhile, it can also be influenced by text and is constituted by various texts. “The relationship between history and text remains in the centre of the New Historicist arguments” (Zhu G 206).
Another important theory New Historicism has established is about the “writer”. Stephen Greenblatt argues that the writer as a subject is always doing “self-fashioning” within the historical context. We can understand the key point of this “Writer Theory” from the meaning of the word “subject”. “Subject” can refer to a person or a thing which can perform action according to its own will. It can also be used as an adjective, having the meaning of “to be submissive and governed by others”. So to be a “subject”, one has to be both “dynamic” and “submissive”. Since the “writer” has become a both dynamic and submissive “subject”, then what role does the writer play in creating a specific work of art? “Negotiator” who has to negotiate with the historical context to create a “currency” (text) that is valid for a profitable “exchange”. Thus “the work of art is the product of a negotiation between a creator or a class of creators, equipped with a complex, communally shared repertoire of conventions and the institutions and practices of society” (qtd. in Veeser 1989 12).

3. Hamlet—the Product of Shakespeare’s Negotiation with the Historical Context
From the New Historicists’ point of view which has been discussed in the previous chapter, work of art can be seen as a product of negotiation between its creator and the historical context. Applying this theory to the study of Hamlet, we can argue that when Shakespeare was creating the play Hamlet, he was in fact, negotiating with the historical context. On one hand, he was a dynamic initiator of action who had his own sharply defined identity and interests; on the other hand, he was a submissive subject under the control of the historical context who had to yield his own initiative to the common and acceptable institutions of the society.
3.1 The dynamic role Shakespeare played in creating Hamlet
3.1.1 Shakespeare, a secret Catholic sympathizer
We can summarize the dynamic role Shakespeare played with the details in this play. Greenblatt has made a name for himself both as a preeminent Shakespeare scholar and as one of the founders of the “New Historicist” approach to literary criticism. Central to his approach is the notion that not only does history affect literature, but literature itself informs history, Shakespeare applied his own faiths and emotions to Hamlet just to fight against Puritanism in secret. Let’s look back to Shakespeare’s life background. We can arrive at a conclusion that Shakespeare is a secret Catholic sympathizer. There are several evidences to prove it. The most obvious cue is that Shakespeare’s father, John Shakespeare, is a secret Catholic sympathizer in Shakespeare’s childhood, so Shakespeare is influenced by his family on some level. The reference of the first part of the Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare—Shakespeare’s life, it writes “John, like his son William, proved to be ‘upwardly mobile’. Having prospered for some twenty years, John ran into difficulties in the late 1570s. He was let off paying weekly for poor relief; he failed to attend council meetings, and consequently was deprived of his alderman’s gown. It could be that he only pretended to be poor and withdrew from council business for religious reasons. – if, like many others, he became a ‘recusant’ when Queen Elizabeth succeeded Mary in 1558, i.e. he refused to give up the ‘Old Faith’, Roman Catholicism.” Shakespeare graduated from Oxford, as one member of several students who were Catholics or had Catholic connections. In that time, it is illegal to believe in the Roman Catholic faith, but Shakespeare signed a statement about the Roman Catholic faith which is found in an old house of the Henry Street in 1757.
Shakespeare as a secret Catholic sympathizer, he applies his religious belief into his works Hamlet. During Elizabethan era, Purgatory is one of the Catholic doctrines. According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Purgatory is the condition of purification or temporary punishment by which those who die in a state of grace are believed to be made ready for Heaven. In Shakespeare’s time, Purgatory was common among people. By 1563, almost forty years before Shakespeare’s Hamlet was written, the Church of England had explicitly rejected the Roman Catholic conception of Purgatory and the practices that have been developed around it. The Protestant Revolution had destroyed a “powerful method of negotiating with the dead” for most people in England. So the Purgatory appeared in Hamlet is reasonable. In the play, when Claudius was praying alone in the confessional, Hamlet gave up killing his uncle because he believe in the purgatory that confession can wash iniquity especially before the death that let his uncle go to heaven. Hamlet as a young man from Wittenberg, with a distinctly Protestant temperament, we can easily understand Hamlet’s elusory actions from the religious aspect. The Purgatory in Hamlet is quite obvious and is easy to accept.
3.1.2 Shakespeare’s interest in mental problems
The dynamic role Shakespeare played in creating Hamlet is also embodied by his interest in mental problems. In Elizabeth’s time, the bipolar has prevailed among people as