I don't take exception in the sense that Hamlet takes interiority to a whole nother level. But certainly it's been remarked that the sense of interiority gets going in the centuries just before Shakespeare, with the Renaissance -- as Charles would remind is, in the early days of the rise of capitalism.
Generally speaking the idea that the concept of the individual arose in the Renaissance is stock stuff (which doesn't make it less true or less deep), going back to Jakob Burkhardt's Hegelian flavored The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1867). E.g., to quote JB:
both sides of human consciousness - the side turned to the world and that turned inward - lay, as it were, beneath a common veil, dreaming or half awake. The veil was woven of faith, childlike prejudices, and illusion; seen through it, world and history appeared in strange hues; man recognized himself only as a member of a race, a nation, a party, a corporation, a family, or in some other general category. It was in Italy that this veil first melted into thin air, and awakened an objective perception and treatment of the state and all things of this world in general; but by its side, and with full power, there also arose the subjective; man becomes a self-aware individual and recognizes himself as such.
That last clause is another paraphrase of the passage in Self-Consciousness in Hegel that I referred to. Btw while in Rome this last summer I passed a house that JB lived in in the 1840s while researching that book.
I'm reading Tony Grafton's Book on Leon Battista Alberti, Master Builder of the Renaissance, 1404-71,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Battista_Alberti
btw Grafton's book
is wonderful and wonderfully written, just like everything Grafton writes.
Alberti invented the theory of perspective, designed important buildings, etc. Although he's very far from bring a fictional character, his writings, and those of other more ordinary Florentines Grafton discusses, display an intense and sensitive interiority 150 years before Hamlet was composed.
--- Robert Wrubel <bobwrubel at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> Tahir Wood <twood at uwc.ac.za> wrote:
>
> "I wonder if anyone here is interested in the
> topic of 'mind-culture
> coevolution' - this article by Bill Benzon is one I
> find extremely
> interesting. It's called The Evolution of Narrative
> and the Self, and it
> situates Hamlet within the historical evolution of
> narrative characters:
> http://asweknowit.ca/evcult/LitEvol.shtml "
>
> I am. A recent Shakespearean called Hamlet the
> first self-conscious character in Western literature
> -- i.e. Shakespeare the first writer to portray
> interiority. I'm sure Andie and Carrol and some
> others will take exception to that, but Hamlet
> certainly shows mental processes on a different
> scale.
>
> Bob
>
> >>> 12/10/07 4:36 PM >>>
> From: Robert Wrubel
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk]
>
> Tahir Wood wrote:
> "Literariness is a kind of secular religion, as this
> writer shows,"
>
> He doesn't "show" it at all,. He just shows a tin
> ear, an inability
> to enjoy theater, a philistine's prejudice against
> something that's
> hard. Anyway, the whole article is a pose, an
> attempt to shock. He
> doesnt mean it anymore than Rush Limbaugh does.
>
> BobW
>
>
> Sorreee. I promise to show more respect in future.
> While I'm about it
> I wonder if anyone here is interested in the topic
> of 'mind-culture
> coevolution' - this article by Bill Benzon is one I
> find extremely
> interesting. It's called The Evolution of Narrative
> and the Self, and it
> situates Hamlet within the historical evolution of
> narrative
> characters:
> http://asweknowit.ca/evcult/LitEvol.shtml
> Tahir
> All Email originating from UWC is covered by
> disclaimer
>
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