Thinking Activity : Cultural Studies in Practice: Hamlet and To His Coy Mistress

# Hamlet and To His Coy Mistress

Hello readers!

       this is my blog as a part of thinking activity to practice cultural studies through the play "Hamlet" by Shakespeare and  the poem "To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell.

       Any literary text , film, cartoons, magazines, clothing, music,game, Food, even in politics, we can find out some cultural aspects or it's influence, these all are not apart from culture but but vitally reflects some cultural aspects.so here i would like to took one literary text "Hamlet" to practice cultural studies, but sir has ask some particular Question of Hamlet like...

Hamlet

• If these two characters were marginalized in hamlet,they are even more so in Stoppard's handling.If Shakespeare marginalized the powerless in his own version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,Stoppard has marginalized us all in an era when - in the eyes of some- all of us are caught up in forces beyond our control.

       The approach of Shakespeare's Hamlet with a view to seeing POWER  relationship in its cultural context, and Veeser, Harold Aram, The New Historicism ' ...Credited the new historicists with dealing with questions of politics,power, indeed on all matters that deeply affect people's practical lives.'and this we can understand by it's two marginalized character Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

     There is two significance of the cultural study of two marginalized characters in 'Hamlet' is  that, one can get deeper insight into shakespeare's culture by thinking not about kings and princes but about the lesser persons caught up in the massive opposites. The poor and powerless are nothing but 'pawns' in the power conflicts of 'mighty opposites'.


Besides, all above the shakespeare's  perspective, one of the writer Tom Stoppard wrote the absurd play 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead' here Tom Stoppard alluded these marginalized characters  as they are archetypal human beings caught up on a ship-spaceship Earth for the twentieth or the twenty-first century -that leads nowhere, except to death, a death for person who are already dead

 # To His Coy Mistress

     The poem 'To His Coy Mistress' is written by Andrew Marvell, the major cultural concern in reading of this poem is that to study implied culture versus historical fact .

      As we know that the speaker is Knowledgeable about poems and conventions of classic Greek and Roman literature, about other conventions of love poetry, such as the courtly love conventions of medieval Europe, and about Biblical passages.

    We can also said that  the speaker, listener- like poet Andrew Marvell- are highly educated persons, those well read, whose natural flow of associated imges moves lightly over details and allusions that reflects who they are and expects listener/readers to respond in a kind of harmonic vibration, because the speaker thinks in terms of precious stones,of exotic and distant places, of a milieu where eating , drinking, and making merry seem to be an achievable way of life. 

   But,  when we are see through the angle of cultural studies of the poem 'To His Coy Mistress'  it's ignored some reality or real cultural aspects like ..

• It does not think of poverty, the demographics and socio-economics details of which would show how fortunate his circumstances are.
• It does not think of disease as a daily reality that he might face.
• It shows that wealth and leisure and sexual activity are his currency,his coin for present bliss.

There are some historical realities that the poem  ignored :

• Disease- real and present disease-what has been called the 'chronic morbidity' of the population
• Plague- more ominous,more wrenching, in its grasp of mind and body of the general population
• Syphilis and other sexualy transmitted disease were just as real a phenomenon in Marvell's day as in our era.