Following the suggestion that Prof. Burton gave in class today, and modeling after Bryan's blog, I set up two pages: one for the sources that I cite in my blog and one for other links and interesting websites I have found. Hopefully this will help keep things a little more organized and a little more scholarly as I can show what I'm studying and where I'm finding my sources. As my German professor keeps telling us "citing shows how smart you are, how many other sources you have read, how many other people are talking about the same subjects."
In looking through all of my old posts (I can't believe I've written 44 in two and a half months!), I was also reminded of several ideas that I had found and thought about, but forgotten. In particular, one where I mention a German play called Der Bestrafte Brudermord (The Punished (or Revenged) Fratricide). I would like to do more research into this, as it is an interesting subject. I found an English translation online, with an introduction that talked about how this play seems to be based more off of a Thomas Kyd play than Shakespeare's Hamlet. Others believe it may be the German translation of the original Hamlet story that both Kyd and Shakespeare based their plays on.
As I have been doing posts about Shakespeare and Germany and trying to find a thesis, I am torn between two ideas that keep recurring.
1. Shakespeare and the Nazis -- I want to continue my research into how Shakespeare was treated and performed under the Nazis, maybe comparing the plays produced in Nazi Germany with plays produced in England or America in the same time period. What does the choice of plays say about Germany and German culture?
2. Germany and Hamlet -- Especially with this reintroduction to Der Bestrafte Brudermord (which I did find a copy of in German!) I would like to study Germany's history with the play and seek to understand why it is so popular in Germany more than elsewhere and more than other plays. What is it about German history or culture that keeps this people interested in Hamlet? And, going off of something Prof. Burton said in class today, are German productions of Hamlet more 'real', more 'authentic' than an English or American production, do Germans innately understand something about Hamlet that we do not?
