Tom Stoppard is justly famous for his innovative theatrical techniques. Daniel Jernigan argues that while much of Tom Stoppard’s early work (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and The Real Inspector Hound, for instance) is postmodern, the remainder of his career essentially tracks backward from there—becoming “late modernist” in the 1970s (Travesties) and fully modernist in the 80s and 90s (The Real Thing and Arcadia). This pattern also makes sense of Stoppard’s recent and uncharacteristic foray into dramatic realism with The Coast of Utopia (2002) and Rock ’n’ Roll (2006), at which point the playwright seems to embrace the more straightforward rhetorical advantages of literary realism.

Daniel Keith Jernigan is an assistant professor of English at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is the editor of Drama and the Postmodern: Assessing the Limits of Metatheatre and has published on Tom Stoppard and Caryl Churchill.

Daniel Keith Jernigan
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 222
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2012
pISBN: 978-0-7864-6532-3
eISBN: 978-0-7864-9309-8
Imprint: McFarland

Preface      1

1. Introduction      5
2. Normalizing Magritte and Tumbling Philosophers      35
3. Modernist Diversions      58
4. Intermission: Night and Day      84
5. Normalizing Postmodern Science      98
6. Metahistorical Detectives      127
7. The Narrative Turn: Re-innovating the Traditional in The Coast of Utopia      157
Encore: Rock ’n’ Roll      186

Chapter Notes      197
Bibliography      206
Index      211

“Jernigan’s analyses are first rate and his scholarship is solid. His prose exudes the confidence of a man prepared to argue his case with gusto that welcomes counterpoint. A welcome addition”—Comparative Drama.