The Phoenix and the Turtle | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 20 pages of analysis & critique of The Phoenix and the Turtle.

The Phoenix and the Turtle | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 20 pages of analysis & critique of The Phoenix and the Turtle.
This section contains 5,755 words
(approx. 20 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Philip K. Bock

SOURCE: "'Neither Two Nor One': Dual Unity in 'The Phoenix and Turtle,'" in The Undiscover'd Country: New Essays on Psychoanalysis and Shakespeare, edited by B. J. Sokol, Free Association Books, 1993, pp. 39-56.

In the essay that follows, Bock contends that The Phoenix and Turtle, like Hamlet, explores a form of unity within which each element retains its identity.

Written at about the same time as Hamlet, Shakespeare's brief poem, The Phoenix and Turtle, bears little superficial resemblance to his longest play.1 Yet condensed into its 67 lines one finds a number of dynamic elements that may have been displaced from the author's awareness while he was writing the tragedy. The Phoenix and Turtle depicts a paradoxical dual unity that, I shall argue, can best be understood as representing the early 'normal symbiosis' between mother and child. This developmental phase is nostalgically commemorated (it has been lost), and it...

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This section contains 5,755 words
(approx. 20 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Philip K. Bock
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Critical Essay by Philip K. Bock from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.