복수라는 신화의 이면: 『햄릿』에 나타난 종교개혁 이후의 유령과 복수
Behind the Myth of Hamlet’s Revenge: Ghost and Revenge in Post-Reformation England
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This essay examines Hamlet as an individual who underwent the spiritual and social process of the English Reformation and argues the motivation and the timeliness of his revenge to be most persuasive. In light of the contemporary post-Reformation anxiety about the changed notion of afterlife, Hamlet’s encounter with the ghost of his late father expresses a confused response to a supernatural no longer explicable theologically under the Protestant regime. The 1547 abolition of Purgatory renders the objects and world of the supernatural inexplicable and illusory for Renaissance England, and the identity of the ghost is now determined through the interaction between the inexplicable and the imagination of the witnesses or spectators. The imaginary presence of the ghost on Elizabethan stage raises not a theological issue, but the ontological question of distinguishing the real self from a fictional or theatrical one. Hamlet’s revenge is prompted by a dire need to consolidate the newly emerged selves and create a stable sense of community. Borrowing René Girad’s theory on sacrificial violence, the essay tracks how Hamlet strives to achieve communal consent on carrying out his revenge to make its effect be most dramatic to the audience and most beneficial to the community. To obtain public consent to single out Claudius as a scapegoat and to execute him in public to purify the community, Hamlet delays his revenge until he transforms his personal vengeance into a sacred violence to terminate the endless cycle of violences, which might destroy the whole community. Hamlet’s revenge works as a pseudo-ritual to remember the sacred moment of removing impurity from the established community. However, the play Hamlet also exposes the theatrical nature of such a ritual by demonstrating the symmetry constructed between Claudius and Hamlet, which originates the myth of revenge.
Abstract
This essay examines Hamlet as an individual who underwent the spiritual and social process of the English Reformation and argues the motivation and the timeliness of his revenge to be most persuasive. In light of the contemporary post-Reformation anxiety about the changed notion of afterlife, Hamlet’s encounter with the ghost of his late father expresses a confused response to a supernatural no longer explicable theologically under the Protestant regime. The 1547 abolition of Purgatory renders the objects and world of the supernatural inexplicable and illusory for Renaissance England, and the identity of the ghost is now determined through the interaction between the inexplicable and the imagination of the witnesses or spectators. The imaginary presence of the ghost on Elizabethan stage raises not a theological issue, but the ontological question of distinguishing the real self from a fictional or theatrical one. Hamlet’s revenge is prompted by a dire need to consolidate the newly emerged selves and create a stable sense of community. Borrowing René Girad’s theory on sacrificial violence, the essay tracks how Hamlet strives to achieve communal consent on carrying out his revenge to make its effect be most dramatic to the audience and most beneficial to the community. To obtain public consent to single out Claudius as a scapegoat and to execute him in public to purify the community, Hamlet delays his revenge until he transforms his personal vengeance into a sacred violence to terminate the endless cycle of violences, which might destroy the whole community. Hamlet’s revenge works as a pseudo-ritual to remember the sacred moment of removing impurity from the established community. However, the play Hamlet also exposes the theatrical nature of such a ritual by demonstrating the symmetry constructed between Claudius and Hamlet, which originates the myth of revenge.
참고문헌 (19)
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