My Research
The Formative Influence of William Shakespeare on the Development of the Works of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud: An Investigation into the Roots of Critical Theory.
The roots of critical theory are the writings of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. Radically different in some ways and fundamentally similar in others, Marx and Freud's theories give critical theory its depth and breadth. Critical theory plays a significant and radicalising role in Shakespearean literary criticism. It renders Shakespeare's plays socially relevant and useful for our times. Heinrich Heine said about literary criticism, “Jedes Zeitalter, wenn es neue Ideen bekömmt, bekömmt auch neue Augen und sieht gar viel Neues in den alten Geisteswerken.“ (Every era, when it receives new ideas, also receives new eyes and sees lots of new things in the old mind.) Marx and Freud's readings of the plays are the new eyes through which literary critics can see new things in the plays.
However, Karl Marx writes in the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte that, “men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances encountered, given and transmitted from the past." If that is so, then, in order to understand Marx and Freud's work, we must discover under what conditions from the past they developed their theories. My research is discovering that there was a large and significant influence of Shakespeare's plays on Marx's and Freud's writings. He was both theorist's favourite playwright. They read his plays throughout their lives, beginning when they were young -- 16 years old in the case of Marx and 8 years old in the case of Freud. They read Shakespeare in the Schlegel - Tieck translation and both theorists used his plays to learn English. They both quote from or allude to 29 of his plays over 160 times in their collected works. Some of the allusions are simply proverbial or vituperative, yet many of them are significant to their theories. There is much evidence that the plays served as a formative influence on the development of Marx and Freud's theories.
This thesis is not without controversy. Most Marxist and psychoanalytic scholars have ignored the influence of Shakespeare on the Marx and Freud's writings. Some hold that Shakespeare was not significant, serving instead a decorative role or as examples in the texts. A few have noted and listed the references to Shakespeare's plays in Marx and Freud's writings. Some scholars, such as S. S. Prawer, have explored the significance of the quotations and allusions. My research will build on Prawer's work by using close readings of Marx and Freud's writings alongside close readings of Shakespeare's plays to discover the influence the plays had on Marx and Freud.
Chapter One - Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud's engagement with the plays of William Shakespeare
This chapter will investigate the exposure that Marx and Freud had to Shakespeare's plays. It will include biographical information as well as statistical data pertaining to their use of the plays.
This chapter will also include a discussion of the forms of intertextuality including a discussion of quotations, allusions, analogies, metaphors and paradigms. Shakespeare wrote his plays in the context of a long history of Classical, Medieval, and early modern dramatic explorations of fundamental human issues. He transformed the paradigms that he found into one of the most significant caches of dramatic engagement with the question of what it means to be human. Through their reading of Shakespeare's plays during their formative years, Marx and Freud tapped into this cache of human issues, and their intellectual development was informed by the plays.
Chapter Two - Karl Marx and the Merchant of Venice
This chapter will explore the formative influence of Shakespeare's play, The Merchant of Venice, on Karl Marx's writings about consciousness and economics. Marx quoted from the play 14 times in his writings, beginning in his early writings of 1842 and continuing up to and including his mature work of 1867, Capital Vol. 1. My research has found that Marx used the play to develop and explain his radicalisation of Hegel's concept of Geist. He also used the play to depict the characters of his tragic narrative -- the class struggle. Marx reads the The Merchant of Venice as a tragedy hidden in a comedy. He finds in it a statement about the emergent economic system, capitalism, which is, at one level, more progressive than the feudalist system from which it emerged and, at another level, more tragic than any system hitherto developed.
Chapter Three - Sigmund Freud and The Merchant of Venice
This chapter will explore the formative influence of The Merchant of Venice on the development of Sigmund Freud's concept of the death instinct. Freud's 1913 essay Das Motiv der Kästchenwahl reads Bassanio's casket choice in The Merchant of Venice as an example of reaction formation against the death instinct. The essay serves as a bridge between Freud's foundational studies for the death instinct -- his 1895 Project for a Scientific Psychology -- and the more traditionally accepted origin of the concept in his 1920 book, Beyond the Pleasure Principle.
Chapter Four - Karl Marx and Timon of Athens
This chapter will explore the formative influence of Timon of Athens on Marx's economic writings. Marx quoted from this play in all of the drafts of his economic works beginning in his 1844 Paris Manuscripts and continuing up to and including his mature economic work, Capital, Vol. 1. Timon's rant against money coupled with many other quotations from Greek, Roman, and German plays allowed Marx to explore and develop his many-sided critique of money. Marx's reading of the play forms one part of the foundation for a feminist-Marxist reading that finds the possibility for mutual recognition as the only glimmer of hope in this otherwise stark tragedy.
Chapter Five - Sigmund Freud and Hamlet
This chapter will explore Freud's reading of Hamlet and its use in the development of the theory of the Oedipus Complex. Three texts from three different epochs of world literature stand out as the pre-eminent discussions of the role and limitations of human consciouness. In the 5th century BCE this text is Sophocles' Oedipus Rex. In the early modern period it is Shakespeare's Hamlet. In modern times it is Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams. The first two texts are significant both intertextually and formatively in Freud's Dream thesis, where he first presents the Oedipal Complex. Freud uses the plays to construct his Oedipus Complex and, throughout thes rest of his career, to support it in the face of strong resistance. Freud fashions himself as a hero, similar to Hamlet, in the history of the struggle of humans to understand themselves.
Chapter Six - Marx and Freud's Readings of Shakespeare's Plays and the Roots of Critical Theory
This chapter will explore how Marx and Freud's readings of Shakespeare's plays form the roots of Critical Theory. Critical Theory's founders, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm and, Walter Benjamin, use and develop Marx's and Freud's methods in the construction of their theory. My research is discovering that their dialectical method has its roots in the methods that Marx and Freud developed under the influence of their favourite playwright, Shakespeare. Adorno and Horkheimer's notion that the Enlightenment has barbarism in its origin and foundations has been influenced by Marx's critique of capitalism and Freud's critique of the rational mind, which in turn were influenced by Shakespeare's depiction of tragedy at the root of the Renaissance.
