Cultural Studies & Formalistic Approach in ‘ Hamlet’

Name : Ravi RajyaguruRoll No : 32Paper : The Renaissance LiteratureM.A : Sem 1Enrolment No : PG -15101032Year : 2015-16Email : rajyagururavi24@gmail.comSubmitted To : Smt. S.B Gardi Department of English

Maharajakrishnakumarsinhji• Bhavnagar University

What is cultural study?

In dictionary cultural study means “ relating to the cultural of society “ It’s not proper definition of cultural because cultural can’t define because it is related to our way of living. So, we can say that “ journey of man from cave man to present day.”

So, Accordind to Horizontol Scroll “ The study of literature,music,film,television,shopping malls, sports, events, cartoons and more.Cultural studies looks at all these things and theories that help us to understand their historical and cultural significance like marxism, feminism, postcoloniel theory, race and ethnic.

Cultural studies is not part of literature but it is kind of an approach to look literature. Cultural studies is Deconstructive Approach because the cultural is studied in literature and studies are always critical. So, we can say that cultural studies not only appreciate literature but also criticize literary text.

So, let us now approach Shakespeare Hamlet with a view to cultural studies.

Claudius is the king and Hamlet is the prince, so both have the powers. They were intelligent and educated with the proper understanding. Here, Cultural studies examines power relationship too. Here, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are also students from Wittenberg but they have not power, so they are just puppets in their both hands.

After the play in the play, Claudius is talking privately with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. In response to Claudius’s plan to send Hamlet to England, Rosencrantz delivers a speech, is an excellent set of metaphors and a summation of the Elizabethan concept of the role and power of kingship

The singular and piculiar life is boundWith all the strengh and armor of the mindTo keep itself from noyance, but much moreThat spirit upon whose weal depends and restsThe lives of many. The cease of majestyDies not alone, but like a gulf doth drawWhat’s near it with it. It is a massy wheelFixed on the summit of the highest mount,To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser thingsAre mortised and adjoined; which, when it falls,Each small annexment, petty consequence,Attends the boisterous ruin. Never aloneDid the king sigh but with a general groan.

Rosencrantz ‘s Speech

This passage is thoughtful and praiseworthy. This is the excellence of marginalized character. Question arises that how many of us notice this lines. This lines should have been considered as the best known line of the play, but they have been ignored because it was spoken by marginalized character or in the other word it was spoken by the person who has not power. Claudius was aware of power, when he observed of Hamlet’s apparent madness that “ Madness in great once must not unwatched go “.With equal truth Rosencrantz and Guildenstern might have observed that power in great ones must not unwatched go. So, at last we can say that power plays vital role in once life.

Formalism is school of literary criticism and literary theory having mainly to do with structural purposes of a particular text. It is the study of a text without taking into account any outside influence. Formalism rejects notions of culture or societal influence, authorship and content and instead focuses on modes, genres, discourses and forms.

The formalist perspective is one of the best perspectives to use in the play Hamlet. It helps a person find the hidden meaning throughout the play in multiple Ways, which allow a person to truly understand the play completely.

Formalistic Approach

4 Seeing and knowing2 The Cosmological Trap

3 Seeming and Being1 The Trap Imagery

In Hamlet we can see formalistic approach such as

These words are not of Hamlet. They are spoken by Claudius, as he tries to pray for forgiveness, even as he knows that he cannot give up those things for forgiveness, even as he knows that he cannot give up those for which he murdered his brother his crown, his fulfilled ambition, and his wife. But the words may easily have been Hamlet’s , for he too is by “ double business bound.” Indeed, much of the play centers on doubleness. In that doubleness lies the essence of what we mean by “dialectic” here a confrontation of polarities.

My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent; And like a man do double business bound, I stand in pause where I shall first begin, And both neglect.

The Trap Imagery

The first scene of act 1 to realize that it is a disturbed world, that a sense of mystery and deep anxiety preoccupies the soldiers of the watch. The ghost has appeared already and is expected to appear again. The guards instinctively assume that the apparition of the former king has more than passing import; and, in their troubled questions to Horatio about the mysterious preparations for war, the guards show how closely they regard the connection between the unnatural appearance of the dead king and the welfare of the state.

The guards have no answers for the mystery, their uncertainly, or their premonitions; their quandary is mirrored in abundant questions and minimal answers - a rhetorical phenomenon that recurs throughout the play, even in the soliloquies of Hamlet; in other words an instance of dialectic.

The Cosmological Trap

The design of the play can be perceived in part in the elaborate play upon the words “ see “ and “ know “ and their cognates. Whereas the deity can be understood as “ Looking before and after,” the prayer king points out to his queen that there is a hiatus between what people intend and what they do: “ Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.” Forced by Hamlet to consider the difference between her two husbands, Gertrude cries out in anguish against having to see into her own motivations:

O Hamlet, speak no more.Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul,And there I see such black and grained spotsAs will not leave their tinct.

Seeing and Knowing