EXAMPLE:

Internal Conflicts in Hamlet

In “The Problematic Relation Between Reason and Emotion in Hamlet”, author Eric Levy explores the conflicts between reason and emotion that are central to Hamlet the character and to Hamlet the play. The article takes steps to look at the conflicts not just as plot points in the play but places them in the broader context of Christian humanism with an emphasis on the writings and philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. Early in the article, it notes that “the concept of the sovereignty of reason over emotion derives from the classical definition, adopted by medieval Scholasticism, of man as the rational animal whose reason has the ethical task of rationally ordering the passions or emotional disturbances of what is formally termed the sensitive appetite”. I cannot speak to what Shakespeare intended when he wrote it, but each reader brings his own experiences, biases, and views to the story. In the Chinese philosophical tradition of the Yin and Yang (Dialectical Monism), the goal is not the supremacy of reason over emotion, but of achieving internal harmony between reason and emotion. In this view reason and emotion are complementary and not opposing forces. I would argue that the story resonates not because it draws from a religious philosophy but because it draws from universal human experience. Every Chinese student learns of Shakespeare and Hamlet, not because of its connection to Thomas Aquinas or Western Medieval Scholasticism, but because Shakespeare successfully gives voice to the emotional uncertainty shared by every person who has ever felt love, hate, anger, hope, or disappointment.

Work cited

Levy, Eric P. "The Problematic Relation between Reason and Emotion in Hamlet." Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature, vol. 53, no. 2, 2001, pp. 83-95.