Faculty Introduction for “Procrastination and Tragedy in Hamlet

Steven Yu wrote this essay for his Perspectives on the Humanities course on the “Literary Hero.” The assignment asks students to critically engage with one of the two canonical tragedies they have just read – Oedipus the King and Shakespeare’s Hamlet – but does not specify how they should do it. Instead, students are encouraged to embark on an inquiry of their own, with the aim to explore the complexity of a chosen literary work, to understand it through the lens of a particular theory, and/or to resolve some controversy that it has provoked.

It seems that Steven has molded into one meaningful inquiry all of the above: he considers Hamlet’s situation, both psychological and social, with a fair amount of care and insight; he examines Hamlet’s status as a hero in the light of Aristotle’s theory of tragedy; he tries to correct the perception of Hamlet as a procrastinator by highlighting both his rationality and alienation. His essay is a useful illustration of how to converse with an all-too-familiar play in a way that is not trite or superficial.

Lin Chen, Lecturer