The Department of English,
Jamia Millia Islamia
and
the Department of English,
Bharati College
invite you to a lecture titled
‘Shakespeare’s Questioning of the Renaissance Image of Man in
Hamlet and King
Lear’,
to be delivered by
Dr. Subhajit Sengupta,
Associate Professor, Department of English and Culture Studies,
University of Burdwan
on Monday, 16th March 2015
from 12:15 p.m. onward
in
the Seminar Room,
Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi – 25.
Abstract:
This proposed lecture falls into two distinct, though related, sections.
The first briefly historicises Renaissance perceptions on the question of human
greatness, while the second looks at Shakespeare’s Hamlet and King Lear as
plays that counter certain major Renaissance humanist assumptions about man,
and occasionally, about the universe. These plays problematize Renaissance
humanist ideology by subjecting it to subtle but incessant questioning. The
essentialist humanism which shapes Hamlet’s mind undermines, almost
paradoxically, the very possibilities of that humanist ideology. Several of his speeches are characterised by
an acknowledgement of conventional Renaissance humanist wisdom about the
universe and about man, only to subsequently give way to a very private
perspective upon the same. This private perspective, pessimistic and cynical,
constitutes Hamlet’s questioning of Renaissance humanist thought. In this
complementary parallelism of macrocosm and microcosm, we have a remarkable
antithesis of humanism and counter-humanism. The skeptical questioning of
Renaissance humanism informs King Lear
too. This play about filial ingratitude is also a play about the ‘barrenness’
of man, and the suggestions of man’s fundamental affinity with beasts threaten
to undermine the distinctions between man and beast so energetically made in
conventional Renaissance formulations of the image of man.
For more
details, please feel free to mail to conf.eng.bc@gmail.com, or call/text Mr.
Anubhav Pradhan at 09999105003.