Tom Stoppard And Postmodern Science English Literature Essay

In his essay “Tom Stoppard and ‘Postmodern Science”'(2003), Daniel Jernigan states that ‘science plays’ can be especially successful and powerful intersection of literature and science. He declares, in many science plays, form and content merge to convey the ideas in an extremely theatrical way that reflects the scientific substance and themes; as analysis of particular textual examples shows, this interdependence of formal and thematic properties has become one of the distinctive features of the contemporary genre of science plays. As a medium of dialogue emerging between science and theatre, chaos theory, serves as a notable metaphor to playwrights of this genre upon which to establish their plots formally and/or thematically.

With the advent of thermodynamic studies, quantum physics, and ultimately chaos theory, scientists have raised a challenge to the static vision of existence we have so long desired to verify. Their neo-Romantic vision questions the Newtonian world governed by a strictly linear causality that asserts a world of invariance which results in a vision of an unchanging ‘Eden’ where everyday is like the next and ultimately individuation is impossible (Demastes xiii).

After centuries of seeing chaos as the exact opposite of order, contemporary world began to adjust its vision to see chaos as a place of opportunities, a location of interactive disorder generating new orders and of order transforming to regenerative disorder- a dynamic blending of disorder and order, then not necessarily be synonymous with randomness, so the term need not have the negative connotation currently attributed to it, yet it is a source of energy out of which change, creativity, and hope have sprung; Hence, this is what the new scientists call ‘chaos’ : nature’s pursuit of patterns of order amid a constant sea of change and reorder(xii).

The paradigmatic shift from linear to nonlinear thinking, from cause-and-effect logic to unpredictability and fuzzy logic, from a Cartesian world view to modern and postmodern vision of the universe, from Apollonian to Dionysian aesthetics, and so on are the trends which implications of ‘chaos’ brings about. The science of chaos is not fundamentally a new one; what is new is a vision of the world which is articulated in the contemporary era. This vision parallels to post-structuralists’ views in language like Derrida, Lacan, Foucault, Deleuze, Baudrillard, Lyotard and Kristeva who privileges the anti-linear, cyclical writing over structuralism’s orderly vision of language and human experience. These thinkers were all influenced by and rejected the formalism of structuralist linguistics and its epistemological subject.

According to Robert Shaw ” you don’t see something until you have the right metaphor to let you perceive it.”( qtd. in Gleick 262). As an (anti-)epistemological metaphor in theatre, chaos theory is utilized by , among others, Tom Stoppard, an influential British playwright and one of the most internationally performed dramatists of his generation who explores the meeting point of ‘chaos theory’ with art, and drama in particular, in most of his works explicitly or implicitly. Arcadia(1993) and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead(1966) are the two of his major plays which are the focus of this study. In this regard, ‘existence’, ‘language’, and ‘form’ are three aspects which are to be analysed as the (anti-)epistemological implications of ‘chaos’ aesthetics in his aforesaid plays.

Arcadia(1993), Stoppard’s most eminent science play deploys the theory of chaos aesthetically in form and content. On its surface, it is about classicism versus romanticism. It is about the relationship between the two- can one exist without the other? (Lukas 123). Jernigan affirms that there exists a similarity of ‘anti-epistemological thought’ between the Romantic era and chaos theory and that a chasm exists between the Romantic/chaotic and traditionally epistemological Enlightenment. He adds comprehending the relationship between Romantic Epistemologies and chaos theory clarifies much about Stoppard’s Arcadia (Jernigan 18).

Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead(1966), another instance of this research, is a transformation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet(1601). Both playwrights cleverly use ‘structure’ and ‘form’ to draw our attention to the nature of truth and reality.

According to Fleming, some scholars read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead(1966) as exhibiting the relativist values of absurdism, existentialism, and ‘structure for structure’s sake’. The postmodern and poststructuralist critics elevate ‘form’ to the level of content and meaning as they valorize ‘form’ in itself, thereby deprivileging the dialogue as they argue that Stoppard’s plays express the unknowability of the world, the elusiveness of true knowledge, the fallibility of human memory, and the relativity of almost all aspects of life. Stoppard’s plays do not possess one clear meaning, but rather are open to a multitude of responses(Stoppard’s Theatre 3).

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1966)is full of theatrical references. By rewriting of Shakespeare’s masterpiece, Stoppard moved from revenge tragedy, Seneca-Elizabethan structure-stagecraft, dramatic techniques (ghost, soliloquy, play within a play), ornate language to ‘theatre of the absurd’, modern and postmodern characteristics: pastiche, irony, parody, word games, vaudeville, burlesque, self reflexivity, absence of a frame of reference, intertextuality, fuzzy language, etc. In this work philosophising, speculating and agonising by Hamlet over grand issues such as meaning of life, death and religion is treated as farce through the modes of satire, irony, burlesque and parody.

By appropriating such an iconic text as Hamlet(1601) and presenting it from the perspective of peripheral characters and then playing upon them for his own purposes, Stoppard demonstrates that the human experience cannot be fully understood by focusing on the dominant narrative. The depiction of reality as a game or ‘spectacle’, the destabilization of identity and the inability of language to offer security of meaning are further pointers to the chaotic implications of the play.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are indeed bewildered innocents who thrown adrift in a disinterested and dispassionate universe. The questioning and dismantling of the individual authorial self convincingly marks the text as an (anti-)epistemological inquiry into how meaning is constructed. There is also a close link with existentialism. Existentialism is a philosophical movement that explores the question of ‘existence’ and how it is defined, particularly in a world in which meaning appears to have disappeared. Stoppard uses Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead(1966) as a vehicle to express these ideas and draws upon what is probably Shakespeare’s most existential work, Hamlet. Hamlet’s famous ‘To be or not to be’ speech is the intertextual echo that resounds throughout Stoppard’s play(http://hsc.csu.edu.au…).

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Follett, Danielle. “The Aesthetics of Chaos: Nonlinear Thinking and Contemporary Literary Criticism (review).” MLN 119.5 (2004): 1106-1110. Project MUSE. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 29 Dec. 2010 <http://muse.jhu.edu/>.

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Follett, Danielle. (2004). The aesthetics of chaos: Nonlinear thinking and contemporary literary criticism (review). MLN 119(5), 1106-1110. Retrieved December 29, 2010, from Project MUSE database.

Statement of the Problem

The purpose of the present thesis is to excavate the (anti-)epistemological ‘chaotic’ aspects( mostly through the post-structuralist perspectives) in two of the plays by Tom Stoppard, Arcadia(1993) and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966), meticulously through the mediums of language, ‘form’, and the very concept of ‘existence’. Plays about science seem to provide a possibility of bridging the gap between science and art. Arcadia as a science play allows to bring to light the recent manifestations of science-art interaction in theatre and dramatize the world of science thematically and formally. Chaos theory which according to Demastes “is a web of interdisciplinary understanding that transcends even the science-art chasm(161)”, is the mainstream focus of such dramatic conceptualization of science in Arcadia.

By highlighting the fundamental mystery of the world and by featuring ‘chaos’ implications, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead(1966), another of Stoppard’s masterpiece, depicts the entirety of the play in total confusion in which Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are bewildered by their imminent deaths and cannot understand the world around them. Their confusion rooted from the apparent randomness of the universe which makes them frustrated by the world’s incomprehensibility.

To reveal the ‘anti-epistemological implications’ into Arcadia(1993) and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead(1966), the researcher with the help of post-structuralist thoughts, means to reveal the fact that knowability is an impossibility, furthermore to reject epistemological certainty.

According to the aforesaid points, this paper examines the two plays which attempt to do so and attempt to analyze the method and the extent to which the playwright accomplish this.

Bearing upon these ideas, the raised questions which are to be answered would be:

In what respect do art and science interface?

Where do chaos theory and theatre converge?

What are the implications of ‘chaos’ aesthetics?

In what manners does Stoppard approach this theory through the features of language, ‘form’, and the very notion of ‘existence’?

Significance of the Study

Stoppard’s immense contribution to the broadening scope of subject matters- from moral philosophy to quantum mechanics- and social, political concerns of British theatre particularly into scientific range is beyond dispute. His plays have a brilliant theatricality. As Heilpern in The New York Observer states “The dramatist of champagne ideas and intellectual curiosity can become dense and difficult in his joy of the mind. It is said that we don’t always understand Shakespeare’s plays, either. But Shakespeare is a breeze compared to Mr. Stoppard. And Mr. Stoppard doesn’t borrow other dramatists’ plots. He has no need. He has no plots.” (Heilpern 1).

From his early triumph in the 1960s, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead(1966), (Tony Awards winner play) which brought him fame, he has continued to present plays decade after decade that have been welcomed by both critical and popular acclaim. He has won extensive awards and honours from the start of his career, one Academy Award and four Tony Awards. Stoppard’s dramas are, above all else, are adept and inventive. He uses the stage, words and language very effectively. Stoppard knows what can be done with the form.

Besides revealing a great deal of artifice in Stoppard’s works, what makes this research significant is the outlook through which the researcher attempts to scrutinize this artistry. This outlook which discloses the science metaphor, specifically the theory of chaos in his two spectacular works Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead(1966) and Arcadia(1993) is the focal concern of this attempt. For doing so , language, form and ‘existence’ are three features selected by the researcher to investigate the (anti-)epistemological implications of ‘chaos’ metaphor in these great works.

Method, Design and Approach

Chaos theory, also known as nonlinear dynamical systems theory, is a field that in recent years

has acquired interest and practitioners in a number of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. The theory’s characteristics, its concepts, and principles are explained in a number of texts including James Gleick’s Chaos: Making a New Science(1988), and N. Katherine Hayles’s Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science(1990) and her edited volume Chaos and Order: Complex Dynamics in Literature and Science(1991). Gleick’s book shows how chaos theory opposes the deterministic Newtonian viewpoint and it highlights the framework’s impact as the third landmark of twentieth-century science together with the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. Ilya Prigogine’s and Isabelle Stenger’s similar concept of the convergence of ideas between the sciences and the humanities show the potential of the application of chaos theory in the study of literature (Aman 2).

Like many other articulations that have emerged from postmodern contexts, chaos theory’s formation has been catalyzed by the Kuhnian paradigm shift which involves new ideas about the behavior of chaotic or complicatedly ordered systems, whether natural or artificial. Sometimes achieving someone’s order creates another’s chaos(5).

Hayles, in particular, argues for the importance of taking into consideration the relationship between chaos theory and literature. The science of chaos and methods for the study of literary reading with regard to deconstruction both undermines constant values of established paradigms (Hayles, Chaos Bound 16-17). Hayles’s collected volume Chaos and Order: Complex Dynamics in Literature and Science(1991) may be the most thorough and well-reasoned application of chaos theory applied in humanities scholarship. The work in the volume shows that both chaos theory and literary trends involve attempts to understand the variability of meaning in systems and texts and questions the traditional concept of chaos theory and the longstanding viewpoint which equates it with disorder, the opposite of order. In her book she observes that the recent decades have seen a fundamental ‘reevaluation’ of this view. In both contemporary literature and science, chaos has been expressed as extremely complicated information rather than an absence of order. Thus, ‘textuality’ is imagined in new ways within critical theory and literature, and new types of phenomena are coming to the front within an emerging discipline known as the ‘science of chaos’ (Hayles 1).

Similar to the emergence of chaos in science from such context and of those phenomena which sprang in literary theory, ‘post-structuralism’ moves away from its predecessors to an anti-epistemological concerns in a text. Post-structuralists are sometimes criticized for reducing the world to text and then to language. By paying much attention to language and structure they valorize ‘form’ and sometimes give the priority to it over the content since they maintain that there is no ‘real’ outside of the text(cultural systems) thus set free the subject from the traces of essentialism.

These thinkers extend the insights of structuralism especially Saussurian linguistics. Saussure asserts that meaning is produced within rather than reflected through language; language is therefore constitutive rather than reflective of social reality. In literary theory, structuralism had focused analysis away from the intentionality of the author but then stabilized meaning construction within the text. Post-structuralism which is encompassed by postmodernist orbit, in a first phase is primarily associated with the deconstructionist practices that took their inspiration from the viewpoints of the later Roland Barthes and, more in particular, of Jacques Derrida.

Post-structuralism favours texts which openly acknowledge plurality and arbitrariness of meaning as these texts portray more honestly the world’s plurality, incoherence, and disorder. They lack a transcendental signifier since the authors emphasise the constructedness of their works.

Following the above listed theoretical propositions, in this study, the researcher postulates that the relation of chaos and order (hence ‘chaos aesthetics’) can be analyzed from an (anti-)epistemological perspectives(of mostly post-structuralism) and based on this hypothesis to analyze its implications in the two works in the world of theatre by an influential playwright of this trend that chaos has been an important theme in his works, Tom Stoppard.

In Arcadia, by paralleling both art and science(chaos theory and thermodynamics), Stoppard makes his meaning purposeful to both modes of disciplines. Through both, he shows the development from classical regularity to postmodern and post-structuralist complexity. Besides the gardening and mathematical change, he argues that language and music in the play also reflect this new postmodern outlook. This is through a variety of misunderstandings in the communication between the characters, or what he calls ‘semantic entropy'(Antor 336).

In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead(1966), Stoppard demonstrates that the human experience cannot be fully understood by focusing on the dominant narrative. The depiction of reality as a game or ‘spectacle’, the destabilization of identity and the inability of language to offer security of meaning, and by presenting it from the perspective of peripheral characters and then playing upon them for his own purposes, further pointers to the chaotic implications of the play are laid out. The two characters by questioning and dismantling of the individual authorial self leaving the text as an (anti-)epistemological inquiry into how meaning is constructed.

The present thesis comprises 5 chapters. Chapter one, Introduction, provides readers with some rudimentary information. Chapter two deals with explication of the theory of chaos and its (anti-)epistemological aspects in detail and the way it is depicted in literature, particularly in the world of theatre. The interpretation of how Stoppard treated the science metaphor of ‘chaos’ by the analysis of his language and ‘form’ and his attitude towards ‘existence’ in his magnum opus, Arcadia(1993) and his early magnificent work, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead(1966) are to be elucidated in chapter three and four, respectively. In the fifth chapter which is the concluding chapter, the researcher summarises the whole argument of the thesis and the concluding discussions will be presented. Then its findings and implications will be discussed, and finally some suggestions for further research in this area will be offered.

Review of Literature

Due to the enhancing interests in interdisciplinary works in contemporary era specifically in science-art venue there exist increasing number of books and articles encompassing a scientific approach to humanity in general and art in particular. The scientific discovery that chaotic systems embody deep structures of order is one of such wide-ranging implications that it has attracted attention across a spectrum of disciplines, including the humanities. Among those bulk of the sources, the most pertinent ones to this study are as follow:

Chaos and Order: Complex Dynamics in Literature and Science by N. Katherine Hayles (1991) in which fourteen theorists explore the significance for literary and cultural studies of the new paradigm of chaotics, forging connections between contemporary literature and the science of chaos. They examine how changing ideas of order and disorder enable new readings of scientific and literary texts, from Newton’s Principia to Ruskin’s autobiography, from Victorian serial fiction to Borges’s short stories. N. Katherine Hayles traces shifts in meaning that chaos has undergone within the Western tradition, suggesting that the science of chaos articulates categories that cannot be assimilated into the traditional dichotomy of order and disorder. She and her contributors take the relation between order and disorder as a theme and develop its implications for understanding texts, metaphors, metafiction, audience response, and the process of interpretation itself. Their innovative and diverse work opens the interdisciplinary field of chaotics to literary inquiry.

Another of Hayles’ books, Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science(1990), for anyone interested in this topic, this book is a must read. Complex ideas are explained clearly, and Hayles is magnificent in her explication of difficult concepts. In hers, both science and the arts are treated fairly.

In William W. Demastes’William W. Demastes (Author)

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unique and invigorating study, Theatre of Chaos: Beyond Absurdism, into Orderly Disorder(1998), chaos theory and quantum mechanics are employed as the basis for a clearer understanding of the often confusing contemporary theatre world. Examining numerous antecedents to contemporary thought on chaos and the cultural roots of the notion of chaos, links are provided to playwrights ranging from Shakespeare to Ibsen and fromTom Stoppard to Sam Shepard. William Demastes investigates parallel developments across the arts and sciences: connections between the dramatic naturalism of the late nineteenth century and Newtonian thought, and theatre of the absurd and chaos theory.

Stoppard’s Theatre: Finding Order amid Chaos (Literary Modernism Series)(2001) by John Fleming is the first book-length appreciation of Tom Stoppard’s work which is a thoughtful and well-considered appreciation of Stoppard’s theatrical work. Stoppard’s language in the mouths of actors can reach a wide audience, and Fleming’s book details how that is possible. It will be of value to directors as well as to theater instructors and playwriting classes. It is also the fullest and most complete analysis of Stoppard’s works from their first presentations to later revivals.

Jim Hunter in his Tom Stoppard: A Faber Critical Guide: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Jumpers, Travesties, Arcadia (Faber Critical Guides)(2000) examines four of Stoppard’s finest works in the context of his entire oeuvre. In his introduction, Hunter writes, Stoppard’s plays present a unique interplay between fun today and the most basic and serious challenges to human understanding. He writes jokes and comic routines; but at the same time he is also writing about moral responsibility, about goodness, and about our scientific, mathematical, or philosophical understanding of reality.

Still, despite all the critical discussions about Tom Stoppard’s works, a topic probing chaos aesthetics through its (anti-)epistemological implications by assessing language, form and the very idea of ‘existence’ in the two of his aforementioned works in a single job is left sheathed, or only touched on in the published criticism while can scarcely be found in the available references.

Limitations and Delimitations of the Study

Being aware of the broad ramifications of science and its inclinations into art, this research deals, in particular with chaos theory as one of the most considered scientific theories in modern era and its convergence with theatre, among other disciplines of art. Pointedly, the main focus of this research is to inspect the theory’s implications in two post-structuralist and prominent dramatic works of art, Arcadia(1993) and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead(1966) by the renown Tom Stoppard, in solely three aspects: language, ‘form’, and ‘existence’ in literary theory with a general, side glance at relevant issues from other quarters.

Stoppard as a celebrity discloses his talents in miscellaneous traits. It is a good fortune that he immersed himself into the scientific veins upon which attracted most of the critics to put his works under the spotlight of various criticisms. Based on the pivots of this study limited to one field of science- chaos theory, the results will have limited applications whilst it can offer readers an opportunity to explore other scopes of science in which he is involved, for instance, quantum mechanics or Einstein’s theory of relativity which he applied metaphorically in some of his works, eg. Hapgood(1988) upon which the researcher does not intent to work in order to maintain the specification of the results. Therefore, there exists abounding aspects capable of being retrieved from his works.

Definition of Key Terms

(Anti-)Epistemological: Alun Munshow by referring to postmodern age as an anti-epistemological age corresponds it with post-structuralism and its attitude towards meaning as how it is constructed. Derridean anti-epistemology which leads to deconstruction asserts that meaning is the product of its linguistic composition as well as the discursive structure of the epoch in which it was produced(Munshow 209). Stoppard uses the structure of his plays as a vehicle to express these ideas and by the questioning and dismantling of the individual authorial self convincingly marks his texts as an (anti-)epistemological inquiry into how meaning is constructed. There is also a close link with existentialism. Existentialism is a philosophical movement that explores the question of ‘existence’ and how it is defined, particularly in a world in which meaning appears to have disappeared(http://hsc.csu.edu.au…).

Chaos Aesthetics: After centuries of seeing chaos as the exact opposite of order, contemporary world began to adjust its vision to see chaos as a place of opportunities, a location of interactive disorder generating new orders and of order transforming to regenerative disorder- a dynamic blending of disorder and order, then not necessarily be synonymous with randomness, so the term need not have the negative connotation currently attributed to it, yet it is a source of energy out of which change, creativity, and hope have sprung; Hence, this is what the new scientists call ‘chaos’ : nature’s pursuit of patterns of order amid a constant sea of change and reorder(Demastes xii).

Form: According to Plato, forms are thus mind-independent entities: their existence and nature is independent of our beliefs and judgments about them. The Phaedo contains an extended description of the characteristics and functions of the forms: “Unchangeable, Eternal, Intelligible, not perceptible , Divine, Incorporeal, Causes of being (“The one over the many”) ,Are unqualifiedly what their instances are only with qualification, non-temporal, non-spatial, they do not become, they simply are(Cohen 1). Cohen summarizes what Phaedo provides and lists all the attributes of Forms that souls also have: “divine, deathless, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, always the same as itself.”(Cohen 1). Yet Aristotle asserts that “structure or form is not just an ingredient in the compound. The form that Aristotle says is primary substance is not, like Plato’s, separable from all matter (except, perhaps, in thought). And it cannot exist if it is not the form of something”(Aristotle on Substance, Matter, and Form 1).

Philosophy of Language: Owing much to doctrines of Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and the logical positivists (Crimmins 1), philosophers of language seek to understand the concepts expressed by language and to find a system by which it can effectively and accurately do so. These philosophers are looking for a theory of language which avoids the least errors of meaning and function which occur in all discussions of abstract concepts and which tend to lead those discussions into complicated closures (Riddle 1).

Post-Structuralism: Post structuralism evolved in the late 1960s as a critique of structuralist theory. The basis of post structuralist theories lie in the belief of the inadequacy of language. Post-structuralism not only questions, but also continues, the central project of structuralism. While structuralism posits that the language system can be described in an objective and scientific manner, post-structuralism suggests that such descriptions are always highly contextual. Jacques Derrida’s theory of ‘difference’ proposed that meaning is inherently unstable due to the play of signs within language. Key post-structuralists are the historian Michel Foucault and the philosphers Jean-François Lyotard and Jacques Derrida. The later Roland Barthes. Also important to the movement are Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Frederic Jameson.

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