下面为大家整理一篇优秀的essay代写范文 -- Two Different Societies behind the Tragedy Hamlet and the Novel In the Skin of a Lion，文章讲述丹麦王子哈姆雷特的悲剧，通常简称为哈姆雷特，是威廉·莎士比亚在1599年至1602年之间的一个不确定的悲剧。哈姆雷特的故事最终源于13世纪传奇人物萨克森·格拉玛蒂斯（Saxo Grammaticus）所保存的安姆勒斯（Amleth）传说。随后在16世纪学者弗朗索瓦·德·贝勒森林（Françoisde Belleforest）的重演中，他的《剧场》（Gesta Danorum）受到了人们的广泛关注，有人认为这是围绕着冷血谋杀的复杂哲学和伦理问题的戏剧化表现，计谋的报复，挫败了欲望。最近，精神分析批评家们检查了哈姆雷特的无意识欲望，女权主义评论家们重新评估并修复了奥菲莉亚和格特鲁德经常残酷的性格
Two Different Societies behind the Tragedy Hamlet and the Novel In the Skin of a Lion
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, often shortened to Hamlet, is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare at an uncertain date between 1599 and 1602. The story of Hamlet ultimately derives from the legend of Amleth, preserved by 13th-century chronicler Saxo Grammaticus in his Gesta Danorum as subsequently retold by 16th-century scholar François de Belleforest.The play's structure and depth of characterization have inspired much critical scrutiny.Some argue that this is a dramatization of the complex philosophical and ethical issues that surround cold-blooded murder, calculated revenge, and thwarted desire. More recently, psychoanalytic critics have examined Hamlet's unconscious desires, and feminist critics have re-evaluated and rehabilitated the often maligned characters of Ophelia and Gertrude.
On the other hand,In the Skin of a Lion is a novel by Canadian–Sri Lankan writer Michael Ondaatje. The novel fictionalizes the lives of the immigrants whose contributions to building Toronto in the early 1900s never became part of the city's official history. The structure of the novel may be described as postmodern in that Ondaatje uses many voices, images, and reorganizes time to tell the stories. Thematically, the book may be categorized as post-colonial with its focus on immigrants and their native cultures and languages.
This article will endeavor to demonstrate two different social background in this two publications.
Introduction
The story of Hamlet is set in the late middle ages (14th and 15th centuries, or 1300 to 1499) in and around (mostly) the royal palace in Elsinore, a city in Denmark. The story dramatizes the revenge of Prince Hamlet,urged by his father’s Ghost to avenge his murder at the hands of the dead king’s brother, now King Claudius; to make matters worse, Claudius has married the widow, Hamlet’s mother, Queen Gertrude. Denmark is under threat of invasion from young Fortinbras, who seeks to regain lands lost to Hamlet’s father by Fortinbras’s father. Claudius sends word to the King of Norway (Fortinbras uncle) to curb Fortinbras’s aggression. In the meantime, Hamlet feigns madness with his family and friends, including his beloved, Ophelia, sister to Laertes and daughter to Polonius.
In the Skin of a Lion illuminates the investment of these settlers in Canada, through their labor, while remaining "outsiders" to mainstream society. In the Skin of a Lion is thus an expose of the migrant condition: "It is a novel about the wearing and the removal of masks; the shedding of skin, the transformations and translations of identity."The book follows the life of Patrick Lewis, who is born in a rural logging town outside of Toronto called Depot Creek. He grows up with only his father, who works as a cattle herder on someone else’s land. His father is a quiet man, and Patrick lives an isolated life alone on the farm, becoming an astute observer of insects and small life around him. His father teaches himself the art of dynamiting, and he gets himself a job in the logging companies helping clear log jams in the rivers by dynamiting stuck logs. Patrick helps him every step of the way, and it is only after his father dies that Patrick leaves for the city of Toronto.
The different stories in this two publications happened in two separated country,Hamlet happened in Danmark,In the Skin of A Lion happened in Canada.Therefore,the following sections of this essay will discuss the background of Hamlet and In the skin of A Lion respectively.
Sixteenth-Century Vibe in Hamlet
The story may have a specific location and time, but it's not exactly historical drama: the play has a distinct turn-of-the-17th century vibe. (Remember, Hamlet was written between 1599 and 1601).
For starters, there are several allusions to the Protestant Reformation, which wasn't initiated until around 1517, when Martin Luther laid out his beef with the Catholic Church in his Ninety-five Theses. Denmark (like England) was a Protestant nation at the time Shakespeare wrote the play and Hamlet seems to be the quintessential Protestant kid —he goes to school in Wittenberg, Germany (where Martin Luther hung out) and he's also skeptical of the Ghost, who claims to be his father's Purgatorial spirit. (Protestants rejected the notion of Purgatory as mere "superstition" —you can read more about this in our discussion of "Religion.")
There's also a whole lot of play-acting in Hamlet, including a performance of The Murder of Gonzago, which is put on by a troop of traveling players (actors) who drop by the castle to put on a little show. That's just the kind of thing that would have gone down in Elizabethan England. (Be sure to check out "Art and Culture" for more on this.)
We should also point out that contemporary directors of stage and film versions of Hamlet have set the play in places and periods ranging from Elizabethan England to nineteenth century Europe to twenty-first century New York City, where Gertrude and Claudius run a high-powered New York corporation and the ghost of Old Hamlet appears on security televisions in the company's offices. The fact that this setting somehow works is a testament to the universality and relevance of the play's themes.
The Royal Court in Hamlet
Then, of course, there's the fact that the whole thing takes place at Denmark's royal court. The dynamic is high-powered and manipulative, like—well, a lot like a high-powered corporation. Public image matters. Hamlet doesn't just get to be a moody teenager in his own bedroom: he has to do his growing up on stage.
Actually, political kids might be a better analogy: Hamlet's strange behavior is a liability to his parents, who have a political interest in bringing him under control. "Madness in great ones must not unwatched go," says Claudius. It's a big political nightmare for Claudius and Gertrude.
The Immigrant Culture in In the Skin Of A Lion
The entire book is focused on giving the reader the experience of the disenfranchised immigrants who built Toronto, to give voice to their silent stories. The Bloor Street bridge and the tunnel under Lake Ontario are built by several nationalities of immigrant men working long hours, and Patrick is our entry into this world.
Patrick is not an immigrant, yet he chooses to live among immigrants, those who don’t understand him and vice versa, in language and in habit. This tendency to stay on the outside yet to long to be inside recurs in the novel, starting in his boyhood when he watched the immigrant loggers who spoke another language: "He longed to hold their hands and skate the length of the creek…" The moment that tears fall from Patrick’s eyes when the Macedonian shopkeepers understand him, is another instance of his being on the outside and then being let inside. Yet, for the most part, his urge to stay outside prevails, and causes him comfort, just as it did when he was a child: "He passes this strange community most mornings during the winter months, the companionship a silent comfort to him in the dark at five am." He is a watcher who "absorbed everything from a distance…" And even after he is taken in to become part of Alice’s family and community, she knows he is happy being on the outside and not knowing the languages spoken among her friends. The puppet show where the immigrants are shown to be persecuted and frustrated because they are immigrants shows the other perspective: wanting to be on the inside. As well, Nicholas works in a bakery all night and still goes to school with ten-year-olds to learn English so he can be on the inside of his new country.
Because there are so many immigrants to Canada during the time of the novel (1913-1940), “North America is still without language, gestures and work and bloodlines are the only currency.” The novel explores different forms of language besides words. Patrick comes to live in a Macedonian immigrant community in Toronto; even though he is a native Canadian, he is isolated by language in his own country. But he learns to relate to those around him, and at a moment when he is in the Teck Cinema watching a silent film and laughing out loud, he looks up and catches the eye of someone else laughing, and they “have the same realization – that this mutual laughter is conversation.” And before this, when Patrick first makes friends in the Macedonian community, it is through his drawing of his pet iguana, to inform the shopkeeper and her family why he keeps wanting to buy vetch every week. When the shopkeeper and her family realize that the stranger in their midst has tried to communicate, they hug him, and he cries with the elation of letting people into his private world in friendship. His tears are communication, and bring him closer to the people around him. When Patrick lives with Alice, she “speaks with her friends slipping out of English into Finnish or Macedonian.” She knows she “can be unconcerned with Patrick’s lack of language, that he is happy.” Patrick has attained contentment and companionship in a world without language.
Yet, the immigrant workers are a different story. They must learn English. Nicholas realizes that "if he did not learn the language he would be lost." He thinks “language is much more difficult than what he does in space,” hanging from the tiers of the bridge as he practices English phrases. The immigrant workers are given English names: "Charles Johnson, Nick Parker…The names strange in their foreign language were remembered like a number, much like the numbering in prison." The puppet show at the Waterworks enacts the frustration of the immigrants, when an actor dressed as a human-sized puppet plays the role of an immigrant in Toronto. The puppet cannot speak and is buffeted around in the crowd, then accused by the police, then finally, collapses in frustration pounds a fist on the floor over and over because it has no words.
References
Alexander, Peter. 1964. Alexander's Introductions to Shakespeare. London: Collins.
Brown, John Russell. 2006. Hamlet: A Guide to the Text and its Theatrical Life. Shakespeare Dennis Duffy (Summer 2001). "Furnishing the Pictures: Arthur S. Goss, Michael Ondaatje and the Imag(in)ing of Toronto". Journal of Canadian Studies. Retrieved 2013-01-26.
Handbooks ser. Basingstoke, Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 1-4039-2092-3.
Susan Spearey.Mapping and Masking: The Migrant Experience in Michael Ondaatje's in the Skin of a Lion.The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 1994 29: 45
Thompson, Ann and Taylor, Neil. 1996. William Shakespeare, "Hamlet". Plymouth, UK: Northcote House. ISBN 0-7463-0765-9
———. 1930. William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. ISBN 0-19-811774-4.
———. 1974b. Shakespeare: The Critical Heritage. Volume four (1753–1765). New ed. London: Routledge, 1995. ISBN 0-415-13407-2.
———. 1974c. Shakespeare: The Critical Heritage. Volume five (1765–1774). New ed. London: Routledge, 1995. ISBN 0-415-13408-0.
———. 1934. The Manuscript of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and the Problems of its Transmission: An Essay in Critical Bibliography. 2 volumes. Cambridge: The University Press.
Pennington, Michael. 1996. "Hamlet": A User's Guide. London: Nick Hern. ISBN 1-85459-284-X.
Wofford, Susanne L. 1994. "A Critical History of Hamlet" In Hamlet: Complete, Authoritative Text with Biographical and Historical Contexts, Critical History, and Essays from Five Contemporary Critical Perspectives: 181–207. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martins Press. ISBN 0-312-08986-4.
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Two Different Societies behind the Tragedy Hamlet and the Novel In the Skin of a Lion
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, often shortened to Hamlet, is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare at an uncertain date between 1599 and 1602. The story of Hamlet ultimately derives from the legend of Amleth, preserved by 13th-century chronicler Saxo Grammaticus in his Gesta Danorum as subsequently retold by 16th-century scholar François de Belleforest.The play's structure and depth of characterization have inspired much critical scrutiny.Some argue that this is a dramatization of the complex philosophical and ethical issues that surround cold-blooded murder, calculated revenge, and thwarted desire. More recently, psychoanalytic critics have examined Hamlet's unconscious desires, and feminist critics have re-evaluated and rehabilitated the often maligned characters of Ophelia and Gertrude.
On the other hand,In the Skin of a Lion is a novel by Canadian–Sri Lankan writer Michael Ondaatje. The novel fictionalizes the lives of the immigrants whose contributions to building Toronto in the early 1900s never became part of the city's official history. The structure of the novel may be described as postmodern in that Ondaatje uses many voices, images, and reorganizes time to tell the stories. Thematically, the book may be categorized as post-colonial with its focus on immigrants and their native cultures and languages.
This article will endeavor to demonstrate two different social background in this two publications.
Introduction
The story of Hamlet is set in the late middle ages (14th and 15th centuries, or 1300 to 1499) in and around (mostly) the royal palace in Elsinore, a city in Denmark. The story dramatizes the revenge of Prince Hamlet,urged by his father’s Ghost to avenge his murder at the hands of the dead king’s brother, now King Claudius; to make matters worse, Claudius has married the widow, Hamlet’s mother, Queen Gertrude. Denmark is under threat of invasion from young Fortinbras, who seeks to regain lands lost to Hamlet’s father by Fortinbras’s father. Claudius sends word to the King of Norway (Fortinbras uncle) to curb Fortinbras’s aggression. In the meantime, Hamlet feigns madness with his family and friends, including his beloved, Ophelia, sister to Laertes and daughter to Polonius.
In the Skin of a Lion illuminates the investment of these settlers in Canada, through their labor, while remaining "outsiders" to mainstream society. In the Skin of a Lion is thus an expose of the migrant condition: "It is a novel about the wearing and the removal of masks; the shedding of skin, the transformations and translations of identity."The book follows the life of Patrick Lewis, who is born in a rural logging town outside of Toronto called Depot Creek. He grows up with only his father, who works as a cattle herder on someone else’s land. His father is a quiet man, and Patrick lives an isolated life alone on the farm, becoming an astute observer of insects and small life around him. His father teaches himself the art of dynamiting, and he gets himself a job in the logging companies helping clear log jams in the rivers by dynamiting stuck logs. Patrick helps him every step of the way, and it is only after his father dies that Patrick leaves for the city of Toronto.
The different stories in this two publications happened in two separated country,Hamlet happened in Danmark,In the Skin of A Lion happened in Canada.Therefore,the following sections of this essay will discuss the background of Hamlet and In the skin of A Lion respectively.
Sixteenth-Century Vibe in Hamlet
The story may have a specific location and time, but it's not exactly historical drama: the play has a distinct turn-of-the-17th century vibe. (Remember, Hamlet was written between 1599 and 1601).
For starters, there are several allusions to the Protestant Reformation, which wasn't initiated until around 1517, when Martin Luther laid out his beef with the Catholic Church in his Ninety-five Theses. Denmark (like England) was a Protestant nation at the time Shakespeare wrote the play and Hamlet seems to be the quintessential Protestant kid —he goes to school in Wittenberg, Germany (where Martin Luther hung out) and he's also skeptical of the Ghost, who claims to be his father's Purgatorial spirit. (Protestants rejected the notion of Purgatory as mere "superstition" —you can read more about this in our discussion of "Religion.")
There's also a whole lot of play-acting in Hamlet, including a performance of The Murder of Gonzago, which is put on by a troop of traveling players (actors) who drop by the castle to put on a little show. That's just the kind of thing that would have gone down in Elizabethan England. (Be sure to check out "Art and Culture" for more on this.)
We should also point out that contemporary directors of stage and film versions of Hamlet have set the play in places and periods ranging from Elizabethan England to nineteenth century Europe to twenty-first century New York City, where Gertrude and Claudius run a high-powered New York corporation and the ghost of Old Hamlet appears on security televisions in the company's offices. The fact that this setting somehow works is a testament to the universality and relevance of the play's themes.
The Royal Court in Hamlet
Then, of course, there's the fact that the whole thing takes place at Denmark's royal court. The dynamic is high-powered and manipulative, like—well, a lot like a high-powered corporation. Public image matters. Hamlet doesn't just get to be a moody teenager in his own bedroom: he has to do his growing up on stage.
Actually, political kids might be a better analogy: Hamlet's strange behavior is a liability to his parents, who have a political interest in bringing him under control. "Madness in great ones must not unwatched go," says Claudius. It's a big political nightmare for Claudius and Gertrude.
The Immigrant Culture in In the Skin Of A Lion
The entire book is focused on giving the reader the experience of the disenfranchised immigrants who built Toronto, to give voice to their silent stories. The Bloor Street bridge and the tunnel under Lake Ontario are built by several nationalities of immigrant men working long hours, and Patrick is our entry into this world.
Patrick is not an immigrant, yet he chooses to live among immigrants, those who don’t understand him and vice versa, in language and in habit. This tendency to stay on the outside yet to long to be inside recurs in the novel, starting in his boyhood when he watched the immigrant loggers who spoke another language: "He longed to hold their hands and skate the length of the creek…" The moment that tears fall from Patrick’s eyes when the Macedonian shopkeepers understand him, is another instance of his being on the outside and then being let inside. Yet, for the most part, his urge to stay outside prevails, and causes him comfort, just as it did when he was a child: "He passes this strange community most mornings during the winter months, the companionship a silent comfort to him in the dark at five am." He is a watcher who "absorbed everything from a distance…" And even after he is taken in to become part of Alice’s family and community, she knows he is happy being on the outside and not knowing the languages spoken among her friends. The puppet show where the immigrants are shown to be persecuted and frustrated because they are immigrants shows the other perspective: wanting to be on the inside. As well, Nicholas works in a bakery all night and still goes to school with ten-year-olds to learn English so he can be on the inside of his new country.
Because there are so many immigrants to Canada during the time of the novel (1913-1940), “North America is still without language, gestures and work and bloodlines are the only currency.” The novel explores different forms of language besides words. Patrick comes to live in a Macedonian immigrant community in Toronto; even though he is a native Canadian, he is isolated by language in his own country. But he learns to relate to those around him, and at a moment when he is in the Teck Cinema watching a silent film and laughing out loud, he looks up and catches the eye of someone else laughing, and they “have the same realization – that this mutual laughter is conversation.” And before this, when Patrick first makes friends in the Macedonian community, it is through his drawing of his pet iguana, to inform the shopkeeper and her family why he keeps wanting to buy vetch every week. When the shopkeeper and her family realize that the stranger in their midst has tried to communicate, they hug him, and he cries with the elation of letting people into his private world in friendship. His tears are communication, and bring him closer to the people around him. When Patrick lives with Alice, she “speaks with her friends slipping out of English into Finnish or Macedonian.” She knows she “can be unconcerned with Patrick’s lack of language, that he is happy.” Patrick has attained contentment and companionship in a world without language.
Yet, the immigrant workers are a different story. They must learn English. Nicholas realizes that "if he did not learn the language he would be lost." He thinks “language is much more difficult than what he does in space,” hanging from the tiers of the bridge as he practices English phrases. The immigrant workers are given English names: "Charles Johnson, Nick Parker…The names strange in their foreign language were remembered like a number, much like the numbering in prison." The puppet show at the Waterworks enacts the frustration of the immigrants, when an actor dressed as a human-sized puppet plays the role of an immigrant in Toronto. The puppet cannot speak and is buffeted around in the crowd, then accused by the police, then finally, collapses in frustration pounds a fist on the floor over and over because it has no words.
References
Alexander, Peter. 1964. Alexander's Introductions to Shakespeare. London: Collins.
Brown, John Russell. 2006. Hamlet: A Guide to the Text and its Theatrical Life. Shakespeare Dennis Duffy (Summer 2001). "Furnishing the Pictures: Arthur S. Goss, Michael Ondaatje and the Imag(in)ing of Toronto". Journal of Canadian Studies. Retrieved 2013-01-26.
Handbooks ser. Basingstoke, Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 1-4039-2092-3.
Susan Spearey.Mapping and Masking: The Migrant Experience in Michael Ondaatje's in the Skin of a Lion.The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 1994 29: 45
Thompson, Ann and Taylor, Neil. 1996. William Shakespeare, "Hamlet". Plymouth, UK: Northcote House. ISBN 0-7463-0765-9
———. 1930. William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. ISBN 0-19-811774-4.
———. 1974b. Shakespeare: The Critical Heritage. Volume four (1753–1765). New ed. London: Routledge, 1995. ISBN 0-415-13407-2.
———. 1974c. Shakespeare: The Critical Heritage. Volume five (1765–1774). New ed. London: Routledge, 1995. ISBN 0-415-13408-0.
———. 1934. The Manuscript of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and the Problems of its Transmission: An Essay in Critical Bibliography. 2 volumes. Cambridge: The University Press.
Pennington, Michael. 1996. "Hamlet": A User's Guide. London: Nick Hern. ISBN 1-85459-284-X.
Wofford, Susanne L. 1994. "A Critical History of Hamlet" In Hamlet: Complete, Authoritative Text with Biographical and Historical Contexts, Critical History, and Essays from Five Contemporary Critical Perspectives: 181–207. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martins Press. ISBN 0-312-08986-4.
51due留学教育原创版权郑重声明：原创优秀代写范文源自编辑创作，未经官方许可，网站谢绝转载。对于侵权行为，未经同意的情况下，51Due有权追究法律责任。主要业务有essay代写、assignment代写、paper代写、作业代写服务。
51due为留学生提供最好的作业代写服务，亲们可以进入主页了解和获取更多代写范文提供作业代写服务，详情可以咨询我们的客服QQ：800020041。