"Is the rest silence?". Modern Tragic in Hamlet and Carl Schmitt's Theory

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13135/2704-8195/6275

Keywords:

Hamlet or Hecuba, Hamlet, secularisation, political theology, katéchon

Abstract

The article focuses on two main issues of Carl Schmitt’s Hamlet or Hecuba: the “intrusion” of historical reality into the play as source of the tragic, and the meaning of “modern tragic” in the book. A reading of Schmitt’s position in these regards is proposed against that of other critics and verified by a textual analysis of Hamlet. The modern tragic elements in Shakespeare’s text are made explicit and compared with Schmitt’s view on the tragic derived from his œuvre. Finally, an exhortation to overcoming the tragic impasse is identified in Hamlet or Hecuba and explained through Schmitt’s past works. Thereby, an aspect of Schmitt’s thought is pinpointed that sets it apart from Shakespeare’s play and exceeds its tragic conclusion.

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Author Biography

Giacomo Ferrari, University of Florence

Giacomo Ferrari took his MA degree in “European and American Languages and Literature” at the University of Florence in 2019, with a dissertation entitled “William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Macbeth: evaluating the power of action and representation faced with the crisis of the Nomos”. Tutored by his former supervisor professor Fernando Cioni, Ferrari is currently PhD student in “Comparative Languages, Literatures and Cultures” at the University of Florence, with a project on the political reading of Elizabethan tragedies and history plays. In 2021, he was panelist in the seminar “Shakespearean Drama, Religious Identity, and the Reformation” of the World Shakespeare Congress of Singapore.

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Published

2021-12-21

How to Cite

Ferrari, G. (2021). "Is the rest silence?". Modern Tragic in Hamlet and Carl Schmitt’s Theory. Filosofia, (66), 87–101. https://doi.org/10.13135/2704-8195/6275