Cycnos | Numéros | Volume 18.1 - Le théâtre britannique au tournant du millénaire

Résumé :

The reading of Tom Stoppard’s Travesties (1974) and Arcadia (1993) is an enlightening experience of intertextuality and postmodernity. In both plays Stoppard dislocates meaning, that is to say dismantles what had for centuries provided the world with a coherent frame of thought. The dramatist flouts historical authenticity as well as the reliability of models, and steers a bold course away from all kinds of conformity by fighting against academic idiosyncrasies and rhetorical obsessions. The unconventional characterization and the playful staging of language similarly reveal Stoppard’s iconoclastic strategy. Travesties and Arcadia also move away from structural conventions: the two plays are paradoxically ruled by generic ambiguity and by the breaking of space and time landmarks. As they theatricalize their own dramatic principles, Travesties and Arcadia turn out to be narcissistic texts that may be read as both theatrical and epistemological metaphors.

Date de publication : 2008-07-17