Guest lecture on Hamlet in the module Literature in Context

On 25 March, the module Literature in Context at the Postgraduate School ZRC SAZU, which is curated by members of the ZRC SAZU Institute of Slovenian Literature and Literary Studies, will host Björn Quiring, who will give a guest lecture on ‘Interpreting Hamlet’s Pregnant Silences: Nietzsche, Lacan, Benjamin’. Dr. Quiring’s lecture will take place at 5pm at the Gosposka Hall at ZM GIAM ZRC SAZU, Gosposka ulica 16, Ljubljana.

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the protagonist frequently and eloquently refers to his own taciturnity and to the fundamental insights into the ways of the world that this silence conceals from his interlocutors. It is partly due to this emphasis on a pivotal inaccessibility that the play has provoked numerous philosophical and psychoanalytical interpretations. For example, Friedrich Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy and Walter Benjamin in Origin of the German Trauerspiel have dealt with Hamlet’s loquacious refusal to communicate; and their interpretations, while problematic, can contribute to a better understanding of the drama, when they are brought into dialogue with each other. They can also serve to question Jacques Lacan’s interpretation of the play and its focus on Hamlet’s struggle with the task of assuming a symbolic mandate. In the resultant reading, Hamlet emerges as a rather sinister figure of modern subjectivity, perhaps even a prefiguration of the fascist mindset.

Björn Quiring is Associate Professor of English at Trinity College Dublin and a scholar of early modern English literature. His teaching and research focuses on the intersections of literary theory with legal theory and philosophy, particularly the work of Benjamin, Blumenberg, Deleuze, and Empson. Quiring is the author of Trials of Nature: The Infinite Law Court of Milton’s Paradise Lost (Routledge, 2021) and Shakespeare’s Curse: The Aporias of Ritual Exclusion in Early Modern Royal Drama (Routledge, 2014).