Human Nature and the Tragic Vision in Three Plays by William Shakespeare: A Psychoanalytic Reassessment of Hamlet, Machbeth and Othello

This book peruses human nature and the tragic vision in the light of William Shakespeare's tragedies. The three tragedies under my analysis: Hamlet, Macbeth and Othello are domestic tragedies since they raise the issue of racism and call for the conflict between husbands and their wives, between an uncle and a nephew, love and incestuous relations, disloyalty in marriage, and the notion of father and mother. Human nature is therefore striking and entirely embedded in these three Shakespearian dramas through the confrontation of male characters with female ones in a dialectics of power and reciprocal domination. This research work shows that all races and all sexes fall equally in the traps of bad human nature and cruelly endure the consequences of their pranks, their shortcomings, their imperfections, their unreasonable impulses, their excessive ambitions, their immoderate passions, their vengeance and their jealousy. The good or bad human nature then depends neither on the skin color nor on the sex of the human being: whether black or white, man or woman we are all liable to evil. Thus, this book shows that we have to develop the culture of acceptance and tolerance bearing in mind that everybody is fallible and has to feel responsible and stay watchful over his own human nature sometimes misleading, sometimes worth of praise.

Auteur

Paméssou Walla is a Senior Lecturer of English Literature and Civilization at the University of Lomé, he is the author of Human Nature and the Tragic Vision in three Plays by William Shakespeare: A Psychoanalytic Reassessment of Hamlet, Macbeth and Othello (2018) and Essays on Feminism, Violence and War in English Drama (2018).