Thesis (PH.D.) - Cairo University - Faculty Of Arts - Department Of English

A study of the plays of Tom Stoppard illustrates the diverse range of material they coverThey cover many various subjects such as art , journalism , writing , love , freedom , choice , identity , death , free will , fate , classicism , romanticism , illusion , reality , reason , emotion , biography , logical positivism , moral absolutes , politics , moralities , etcStoppard is the first playwright who has touched upon a great number of leading figures such as George Moore and Alfred Ayer (Jumpers) , Henry Carr , Tristan Tzara , and Lenin (Travesties) , Lord Byron (Arcadia) , A E Housman , Moses Jackson , Oscar Wilde , the Oxford scholars Walter Pater , John Ruskin , and Mark Pattison (Invention of Love) , William Shakespeare (Shakespeare in Love) , Alexander Herzen , Vissarion Belinsky , Nicholas Ogarev , Karl Marx , Ivan Turgenev , and Nicholas Stankevich (Coast of Utopia) He has touched upon various theories as technical devices such as the game of cards (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) , the vantage point (Jumpers) , quantum mechanics (Hapgood) , Catastrophe Theory (Professional Foul) , Chaos Theory and Newton's Determinism (Arcadia) His talk of retiring from writing plays forever is , then , no surprise neither to his audience nor to his readers for he seems to have completed his long journey of writing with his trilogy , The Coast of Utopia (with its three parts Voyage , Shipwreck , and Salvage) Stoppard has often pronounced : I write plays because dialogue is the most respectable way of contradicting myselfThe fact that he is interested primarily in ideas has much to do with the several contradictions occupying his plays and interviewsSuch two facts - dealing with ideas and revealing so many contradictions - are the ground on which he builds the various oppositions with which his theatre is repleteThese contradictions have further developed into the inner - conflicts from which one of the two opposing forces suffersHowever , the main target of this research has not been confined to defining and discussing oppositions , or even showing them in reconciliationPer contra , it has been essential in dealing with them to show how these oppositions work and , therefore , are convincingly unresolvedOf the oppositions depicted in Stoppard's theatre are the Individual Choice vs Established Order and Free Will vs Fate oppositionsBesides , there are the Moral and the Political oppositions , in addition to the oppositions on ideologies and valuesHad these oppositions been reconciled in Stoppard's theatre , this research would have been of no much value because oppositions in general are not novel to StoppardMoreover , the irreconcilability of these oppositions in Stoppard's theatre is of great undeniable significance ; they are indicative of our life as a series of conflicting attitudes as they always end as open - ended debates

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