Stoppardian Drama: Postmodernist and Counter-postmodernist Attitudes

Stoppardian Drama: The approach towards a text through a postmodernist and counter-postmodernist consciousness brings into mind new methods and theories of criticism like New Historicism. This study, however, is not merely committed to an analysis of the postmodernist aspects of (Czech-born British playwright) Tom Stoppard?s drama with a New Historicist stance; rather it aims to exploit or make use of the New Historicist hints to understand what Stoppard strives to do while writing his plays, because there are striking parallelisms between Stoppard?s technique of creating his plays and the New Historicist critics? method of analysing history and literary texts. In a way Stoppard plays the role of a new historicist while writing his brilliant comedies of ideas. This book, thus, aims to show the parallelism between the New Historicist approach and Stoppard?s playwriting by a close reading of Travesties, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Arcadia. The three plays that have been studied in this book are most likely to serve as reflections of the new historicist practice within a fictional framework and prove the very claim that Stoppard is a new historicist playwright.