1st Edition

The Death of Hamlet A Counterfactual Reading of Shakespeare

By Amir Khan Copyright 2024
142 Pages 1 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

142 Pages 1 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

142 Pages 1 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book is an intervention in Hamlet scholarship. In Thus Spake Zarathustra (1885), Nietzsche famously posited the death of God, taken to mean the dissolution of all horizons within which human beings construct a plausible ontology that gives words significance. The idea of God, as a transcendental signified (to borrow from Derrida), underwrites meaning and values. Socrates placed knowing... Read more

Preface

1.     Overture, or How to Do Things with Greg

2.     Invisible Speech in Hamlet

3.     Ah Q and Hamlet: Materialism meets Modernity

4.     Hamlet as Conspirator: A Reading of Julius Caesar

5.     Timon of Athens and the Pursuit of Human Unhappiness

6.     Marxian Coda

Biography

Amir Khan is Associate Professor of English in the Foreign Studies College at Hunan Normal University in Changsha. His books include Shakespeare in Hindsight (2016) and Comedies of Nihilism (2017). He is also managing editor of Conversations: The Journal of Cavellian Studies. He lives and works in China.

“A take-no-prisoners account of Hamlet and its critical and political afterlives. Original and provocative.”

--Professor Richard Halpern, New York University, USA

"Amir Khan's captivating exploration of Ah Q and Hamlet shifts focus away from Hamlet's delay and refreshingly revitalizes Hamlet's inner life. Khan reveals a vast and relevant landscape of Shakespearean interpretations. Bold and thought-provoking, this book redefines our understanding of Hamlet."

-Dr. Ivy Hao Liu, Tsinghua University, People's Republic of China