Research Article
BibTex RIS Cite

Shakespeare’in Hamlet, Homer ve Barker’in Achilles’den, Barnes ve Saunders’e: Ölümden Kaçmak, Sonunda Bilinmeyen’e Yenik Düşmek

Year 2021, Volume: 15 Issue: 1, 1 - 16, 29.06.2021
https://doi.org/10.47777/cankujhss.959586

Abstract

Bu makale, Achilles’den Shakespeare’in Hamlet’ine, çağdaş yazarlar Julian Barnes ve George Saunders’e kadar ölüm olgusuna yaklaşımları tartışmayı amaçlar. Araştırmanın konusu olan yazarların eserleri, kader ve bilinmeyene gidişi kabullenmeden önce nihai adaleti beklerken bile ölümden kaçınma veya onu kontrol etme arzusunu ortaya koyar. Hamlet’in babasının araftaki hayaline olan ilgisi, daha sonra kendi sorunları arasında unutulur; Achilles erken ve şaşalı bir ölümü kabul etmişken Hades’deki kaybolan yaşantısının yasını tutar. Barker ise onu, ölümü kabullenmesine karşın oğlunun geleceğini planlarken gösterir. Çağdaş Saunders, Lincoln’ın genç oğlunun arafın eşiğinde tutulurken sonsuz kaderi, yargılanma ve sona ulaşma için onun cesaretlendirilmesini konu eder. Barnes’ın arzularını tatmin edecek cennet rüyası, aslında böyle bir cennetin bile nihai olarak kötü olduğunu gösterir, yarattığı karakter bir anlam aramakta ve kendi kişiliğinin tuzağına düşmektedir. İncelenen eserler göstermiştir ki, kaleme alındıkları dönemler farklı da olsa ölümden neye mal olursa olsun kaçınmaya çalışır ama sonuçta onu kabullenir ve mümkünse hayata nihai adaleti getirmesini umarlar.

References

  • Atwood, Margaret. Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
  • Barber, Lynn. “Julian Barnes Dances Around Death,” Nothing to be Frightened of by Julian Barnes. The Telegraph Review, 5.3. 2008.
  • Barker, Pat. The Silence of the Girls. Penguin Books, 2018.
  • Barnes, Julian. A History of the World in 10½ Chapters. Picador, Pan Macmillan, 1989.
  • Bradley, A.C. Shakespearean Tragedy. St. Martin’s Press, 1969.
  • Brockes, Emma. “Interview with Julian Barnes: The Sense of Another Ending.” The Guardian Review, 30.03.2013.
  • Buxton, Jackie. “Julian Barnes’s Theses on History (in 10½ Chapters).” Contemporary Literature, vol. 41. no 1 (Spring, 2000), pp. 56-86. Camus, Albert. La Peste. Gallimard, 1947.
  • Cavell, Stanley. Disowning Knowledge in Seven Plays of Shakespeare. Cambridge University Press, 1987, 2003.
  • Derrida, Jacques. From Specters of Marx: What is Ideology, 1994.
  • De Grazia, Margreta. “Hamlet before its Time.” Modern Language Quarterly 62.4 (Dec. 2001), 355-375.
  • Eliot, T.S. The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism. Methuen & Co. Ltd. 1920.
  • Greenblatt, Stephen. Hamlet in Purgatory. Princeton University Press, 2001.
  • Guthrie, W.K.C. The Greeks and their Gods. Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1950.
  • Homer. The Odyssey. Trans. E.V. Rieu. Penguin Books, 1946.
  • Homer. The Iliad. Trans. E.V. Rieu, revised Peter Jones with D.C.H. Rieu. Penguin Books, 2003.
  • Houghton, Lord. The Life & Letters of John Keats. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1969.
  • Joyce, James. Dubliners. Penguin Books, 1914, 1 956.
  • Khayyam, Omar. The Rubaiyat. Trans. Edward Fitzgerald. Jarrold & Sons, Ltd.
  • Lacan, Jacques, Jacques-Alain Miller and James Halbert. “Desire and the Interpretation of Desire in Hamlet.” Yale French Studies: Literature and Psychoanalysis: The Question of Reading, 55.56 (1977), pp. 11-52.
  • O’Farrell, Maggie. Hamnet. Tinder Press, 2020.
  • Royle, Nicholas. Derrida’s Event,” Derrida’s Legacies: Literature and Philosophy, ed Simon Glendinning and Robert Eaglestone. Routledge, 2008.
  • Rubinson, Gregory J. “History’s Genres: Julian Barnes’s A History of the World in 10½ Chapters.” Modern Language Studies, vol. 30, no 2 (Autumn 2000), pp. 159-179.
  • Sartre, Jean-Paul Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1943, 1958.
  • Saunders, George. Lincoln in the Bardo. Bloomsbury, 2017.
  • Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Longman, 1970.
  • Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works. Collins, 1951.

Thanatos in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Homer and Barker’s Achilles, Barnes and Saunders: Warding off Death before Release into the Unknown

Year 2021, Volume: 15 Issue: 1, 1 - 16, 29.06.2021
https://doi.org/10.47777/cankujhss.959586

Abstract

This paper offers an existential approach to writers’ responses to death, evaluating their different views regarding our ultimate destiny, Thanatos. It considers the deliberations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the archetypal death-ponderer, and Homer’s Achilles, approaching our own time through contemporaries like Julian Barnes, George Saunders and Pat Barker. These writings spanning hundreds of years demonstrate our desire to evade or control death, while anticipating ultimate judgment for behaviour in this life, before loosening our attachment to life in accepting our final fate. We watch Hamlet’s concern for his father’s ghost tortured in purgatory and his wish for revenge, as it became surpassed by Hamlet’s interrogations concerning his own mortality, still obsessed by death, to which force he finally surrenders. While Achilles had initially embraced a gloriously heroic, youthful death, Homer subsequently shows him mourning the loss of his life in Hades; Pat Barker shows Achilles as reconciled to death, even while attached to life in considering his child’s future. The contemporary George Saunders presents Lincoln’s young son caught in a liminal bardo of the dead, who are trapped in attachment to their mortal state, while Willie is enabled to transition to his final state of possible judgment and closure. Julian Barnes’ wish-fulfilment dream or desire of heaven offers this ideal as a debased, corporeal paradise, leaving his character longing for meaning, even while trapped in the limitations of his own personality. Visions and dreams from Homer and Shakespeare onwards offer cryptic clues regarding unknown future states. These literary reflections through disparate eras indicate the human aspiration to evade death and whatever lies beyond it, while often positing a final surrender to death, alongside a wish for it to make sense of life through karmic resolution.

References

  • Atwood, Margaret. Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
  • Barber, Lynn. “Julian Barnes Dances Around Death,” Nothing to be Frightened of by Julian Barnes. The Telegraph Review, 5.3. 2008.
  • Barker, Pat. The Silence of the Girls. Penguin Books, 2018.
  • Barnes, Julian. A History of the World in 10½ Chapters. Picador, Pan Macmillan, 1989.
  • Bradley, A.C. Shakespearean Tragedy. St. Martin’s Press, 1969.
  • Brockes, Emma. “Interview with Julian Barnes: The Sense of Another Ending.” The Guardian Review, 30.03.2013.
  • Buxton, Jackie. “Julian Barnes’s Theses on History (in 10½ Chapters).” Contemporary Literature, vol. 41. no 1 (Spring, 2000), pp. 56-86. Camus, Albert. La Peste. Gallimard, 1947.
  • Cavell, Stanley. Disowning Knowledge in Seven Plays of Shakespeare. Cambridge University Press, 1987, 2003.
  • Derrida, Jacques. From Specters of Marx: What is Ideology, 1994.
  • De Grazia, Margreta. “Hamlet before its Time.” Modern Language Quarterly 62.4 (Dec. 2001), 355-375.
  • Eliot, T.S. The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism. Methuen & Co. Ltd. 1920.
  • Greenblatt, Stephen. Hamlet in Purgatory. Princeton University Press, 2001.
  • Guthrie, W.K.C. The Greeks and their Gods. Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1950.
  • Homer. The Odyssey. Trans. E.V. Rieu. Penguin Books, 1946.
  • Homer. The Iliad. Trans. E.V. Rieu, revised Peter Jones with D.C.H. Rieu. Penguin Books, 2003.
  • Houghton, Lord. The Life & Letters of John Keats. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1969.
  • Joyce, James. Dubliners. Penguin Books, 1914, 1 956.
  • Khayyam, Omar. The Rubaiyat. Trans. Edward Fitzgerald. Jarrold & Sons, Ltd.
  • Lacan, Jacques, Jacques-Alain Miller and James Halbert. “Desire and the Interpretation of Desire in Hamlet.” Yale French Studies: Literature and Psychoanalysis: The Question of Reading, 55.56 (1977), pp. 11-52.
  • O’Farrell, Maggie. Hamnet. Tinder Press, 2020.
  • Royle, Nicholas. Derrida’s Event,” Derrida’s Legacies: Literature and Philosophy, ed Simon Glendinning and Robert Eaglestone. Routledge, 2008.
  • Rubinson, Gregory J. “History’s Genres: Julian Barnes’s A History of the World in 10½ Chapters.” Modern Language Studies, vol. 30, no 2 (Autumn 2000), pp. 159-179.
  • Sartre, Jean-Paul Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1943, 1958.
  • Saunders, George. Lincoln in the Bardo. Bloomsbury, 2017.
  • Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Longman, 1970.
  • Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works. Collins, 1951.
There are 26 citations in total.

Details

Primary Language English
Subjects Literary Studies
Journal Section Articles
Authors

Gillian Alban

Publication Date June 29, 2021
Published in Issue Year 2021 Volume: 15 Issue: 1

Cite

APA Alban, G. (2021). Thanatos in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Homer and Barker’s Achilles, Barnes and Saunders: Warding off Death before Release into the Unknown. Cankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 15(1), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.47777/cankujhss.959586

Çankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences
Genel Yayın Yönetmeni, Öğretmenler Caddesi No.14, 06530, Balgat, Ankara.
İletişim | Communication: e-mail: mkirca@gmail.com | mkirca@cankaya.edu.tr
Website: http://cujhss.cankaya.edu.tr/about-the-journal/
Basım | Printed and bound by Teknoart Digital Ofset Reklamcılık Matbaacılık İth. İhr.
San. ve Tic. Ltd. Şti. Cevizlidere Mahallesi 1288 Sokak No.1/1 Çankaya, Ankara, Turkey
Çankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Dergisi ulusal ve uluslararası
araştırma ve derleme makalelerini yayımlayan uluslararası süreli bir yayındır. Yılda iki
kez yayımlanır (Haziran ve Aralık). Derginin yayın dili İngilizcedir.
Basım | Printed in Ankara
CUJHSS, ISSN 1309-6761
cujhss.cankaya.edu.tr