Tom Stoppard'ın Rosencrantz ve Guildenstern Öldüler ve Travestiler Oyunlarında Postmodern Söylem

• Published in: Selçuk Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü dergisi 2017-01 (37), p.231
• Main Author: Günenç, Mesut
• Format: Article
• Language: Turkish
• Subjects: Baudrillard, Jean; British & Irish literature; Distinctive features; Drama; Ethics; Foucault, Michel; Imitation; Intertextuality; Irony; Narratives; Pastiche; Politics; Postmodernism; Society; Stoppard, Tom; Theater
• ISSN: 1302-1796; 1304-8899

Tom Stoppard, one of the most significant playwrights of the post-war British Drama, wrote plays including different subjects such as society, politics, ethics, art and ontological questions. Stoppard tries to reflect the men having different ideas in his plays in order to mention social problems. Discussing the incidents and occurrences around the world, he tries to comment about them. This study aims to examine postmodern expansion and features of postmodern theatre in Tom Stoppard's plays Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and Travesties. Though modern and postmodern discourses can be found in Tom Stoppard's dramatic theatre, this study portrays postmodernist features in these two plays as an example of postmodern theatre. Postmodernism has a collected feature which contain widespread elements such as parody, pastiche, irony, intertextuality and collage and it first takes place in contemporary culture and then literature and finally theatre. Stoppard's plays will be studied in compliance with the specific notions and theories that are more noticeable in Stoppard's dramatic theatre. His theatre includes Jean-François Lyotard's theory of the death of (grand) meta-narratives and the theory of language game, Fredric Jameson's effort to integrate politic and social area with art and aesthetics in consumer society, Michel Foucault's death of subject and Jean Baudrillard's simulacra and imitation. As example of postmodern plays, Stoppard's works Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern Are Dead and Travesties involve postmodern vocabulary as death of meta-narrative, simulation, pastiche, irony and intertextuality. These plays represent vagueness, noncontinuation, dissolution, uncertainty and postmodern heroism (no heroism at all), which are the specified as the most distinctive features of postmodern discourse and theatre. Besides this, Stoppard especially focuses on the relationship between art and theatre. To Stoppard, art and artist are the most important component which develop and change the society. Stoppard, representing different ideas related with art by the help of artists, directs men to question and contemplate. As a consequence, this study aims to clarify Tom Stoppard's dramatic works as examples of postmodernist theatre and to make reference to these postmodern theories to his Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Travesties.