Between Madness And Reason

The madman is an image who often comes up in literary works. Shakespeare frequently portrayed some madmen images in his four great tragedies. Meanwhile, the famous philosopher and historian Michel Foucault also had a profound understanding of madness. The thesis tries to study the madmen images in the four tragedies with Foucault’s related madness theories. Then the paper further explores the purpose of Shakespeare’s creation.The introduction sketches Shakespeare’s works and achievements together with the four tragedies. The following is to summarize the literature reviews of the four tragedies on madness and the purpose and significance of the paper.Chapter One introduces the evolution of madness concept and Foucault’s understanding of madness. In Foucault’s opinion, there is no clear distinction between madness and reason.Combining with the causes of madness and Foucault’s madness theory, Chapter Two divides the madmen images in the four tragedies into four types:the pretended madmen, the forced madmen, the professional madmen and the punished madmen.With the analysis of the four types of madmen images in Chapter Two, Chapter Three and Chapter Four divide the four types of madmen images into the normal men’s madness and the madmen’s soberness. These two chapters adopt Foucault’s understanding of the relationship between madness and reason to study the madmen images before and after change. The sober men in common sense would make mad behaviors while the so-called madmen could see the truth. Just as Foucault said, there is no boundary between madness and reason.The conclusion is drawn the reasons why Shakespeare prefer to create madmen images in his four tragedies. Through the doubt of human’s cognitive competence, he wanted to announce that the reasonable men are not surely to make right decisions while the madmen’s speeches are sometimes reasonable. Meanwhile, he wanted to promote truth and humanity through madmen images.