Hamlet and His Problems

Hamlet and His Problems is an essay written by T.S. Eliot in 1919 that offers a critical reading of Hamlet. The essay first appeared in Eliot's The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism in 1920. It was later reprinted by Faber & Faber in 1932 in Selected Essays, 1917-1932. Eliot's critique gained attention partly due to his claim that Hamlet is "most certainly an artistic failure." Eliot also popularized the concept of the objective correlative — a mechanism used to evoke emotion in an audience — in the essay. The essay is also an example of Eliot's use of what became known as new criticism.

Read more about Hamlet And His Problems:  Content, Objective Correlative, Criticism

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