Course content - Learning outcome - Admission - Prerequisites - Teaching - Examination - Evaluation

Course content

Tom Stoppard is the preeminent English playwright of ideas, and this course will be devoted to studying four of his most distinguished plays: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967), Travesties (1974), Arcadia (1993), and The Invention of Love (1997). Each of these plays uses the resources of drama to drive an inquiry into a distinct complex of philosophical, literary, and historigraphical questions. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead poses intriguing questions about determinism, chance, and free will—as does Arcadia, from the very different perspective of mathematical chaos. Travesties considers the politics and aesthetics of the avant-garde through the figures of Joyce, Lenin and Tzara. The Invention of Love interrogates the problematical relationship between life, biography, and art. Moreover, each of these works plays against earlier literary works and sustains a fascinating dialogue with literary tradition. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead occupies, or rather invents, the margins of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Travesties ‘travesties’ Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. Arcadia engages the European tradition of literary pastoral, and The Invention of Love draws on the classicist and poet A. E. Housman’s life, scholarship and poetry to examine salient tensions in late Victorian culture.

The aim of this course will be to examine the interplay between literary tradition, Stoppard’s dramatic ideas, and the intellectual material presented in the plays. Adopting a perspective indebted to recent reception studies, the course will not only consider how intellectual problems and literary traditions inform Stoppard’s plays, but also how the plays, in reconfiguring their intellectual and literary materials, may also help us to creatively rethink those materials.

Learning outcome

After completing this course you will have:

• developed a vocabulary for discussing the relationship between Stoppard’s ideas and dramatic techniques.
• learned to analyze plays as a means of thinking creatively and rigorously about historical events, traditions and debates.

Admission

Students at UiO must apply for courses in StudentWeb.

International applicants, if you are not already enrolled as a student at UiO, please see our information about admission requirements and procedures for international applicants.

The examination in this course is not available for external candidates. Only students admitted to the course may sit for the examination.

Prerequisites

Formal prerequisite knowledge

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Admission to master program in literature or LeP

Teaching

The course is taught throughout the semester with two hours per week for 10 weeks, 20 hours in all.

Attendance is an obligatory class requirement (80%). Additional absences must be justified by documentation to the exam coordinator. Read more about guidelines for compulsory activities.

Access to teaching

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Examination

The exam is a term paper of 10 standard pages. Students will have an opportunity to receive commentary on drafts of their papers.

You must submit your final paper in Fronter. Read more about submission procedures.

The term paper is the basis for the grade in this course.

Examination support material

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Language of examination

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English

Grading scale

Grades are awarded on a scale from A to F, where A is the best grade and F is a fail. Read more about the grading system.

Explanations and appeals

You may request an explanation of your grades, and you may also appeal against your grades or make a complaint about formal examination errors. Read more about explanations and appeals.

Resit an examination

You can usually resit an exam, but the conditions depend on whether you had a valid reason for absence from the regular exam. Read more about resitting an exam.

Withdrawal from an examination

A student may sit this exam up to 3 times. If a student wishes to withdraw from the exam, s/he must do so in StudentWeb at least two weeks prior to the first day of the exam. Failure to do so will be counted as one of the three opportunities to sit the exam.

Special examination arrangements

If you have a disability or a health problem that entails significant inconvenience in an examination situation, you may be considered for special examination arrangements. Mothers who are breastfeeding may apply for extra time to complete the exam.

Evaluation

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