"Arcadia"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines Tom Stoppard's play "Arcadia", which is set in an English country manor house where two levels of action take place-- the action of the present day and the action set in 1809 around a young student of mathematics. In particular it analyzes the influence on the plot of the poet Lord Byron by drawing parallels between his life and the characters in the play. It looks at how Byron's influence is felt not only on the mathematical side of the play, but also in the continuing debate over the nature of landscape art and how the young girl Thomasina, is a living and dead parallel with Byron's own, real-life abandoned female child. When Byron fled his pregnant wife, the young girl he produced became a mathematical prodigy herself just like the protagonist in the play.

From the Paper:

"The intersection between the beautiful and the perfect in mathematics, between the theoretical and the personal, is perfectly embodied in the character of Lord Byron. Thomasina, the girl being tutored, is an exponent of the geometry of irregular forms, a precursor to the chaos theory being studied by the modern characters in the house. The introduction and variations of small elements and their potential to create great later changes is important in the scheme of the play."

More papers on "Arcadia":

• Analytical Essay # 46687 : "Tom Stoppard's 'Arcadia'"
• Book Review # 148449 : "The notions of life and death in Ben Okri's "In Arcadia"
• Book Review # 104201 : "The Old Arcadia"

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