Hamlet and the Rethinking of Man

This book isolates the conceptual apparatus dominant in the world of the play.

It traces the play's origins, including those pertaining to Christian Humanism and the Aristotelian-Thomist synthesis with its assumption of 'the sovereignty of reason.' The book also analyzes how and in what respects this conceptual apparatus construes the human act or 'what is a man.' It tracks the ways in which the play subjects the components of this apparatus to dramatic conflict that reveals their inherent paradoxes and contradictions, as well as explicating the new conceptual dispensation that results from this disintegration, including its intellectual and moral implications.Finally, it addresses the factors tending, even after dismantlement, to reconstitute and encourage reversion to the former dispensation.

The concern of such inquiry is to show how intellectual tools for formulating the meaning of human experience and the interpretation of character undergo penetrating critique and eventual displacement.

Eric P. Levy is an Associate Professor of English at the University of British Columbia.