Friday, February 3, 2012

Hamlet, Inception, and Jungian Philosophy

In another class, we're reading the script for Christopher Nolan's Inception from a Jungian/ archetypal perspective. Since I'm so entrenched in this process, I started to wonder about Hamlet through this lens. I wonder if it would be interesting to analyze and compare the two ... what universal themes and archetypes as expressed in Hamlet does Nolan carry forward into contemporary film?

I thought I'd do some preliminary study on Hamlet through archetypal or cultural criticism. Here are two articles I found: One is about the scapegoat archetype of Polonius and one about the universal disappointment in imperfect parents.  It also brought me to a resource that many of you might find particularly useful, an online annotated bibliography to Hamlet research called Hamlet Haven.

2 comments:

  1. I'd love to hear more about this, sounds very interesting.

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  2. I like the idea about imperfect parents. That can really mess people up, obviously, now that we know about Hamlet...

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