Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt (2020) as Encyclopedia
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2023 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Silesian Studies In English 2021. Proceedings of the 6th international conference of English and American studies, 9th-10th September 2021 |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| web | https://www.slu.cz/fpf/cz/file/cul/9d1c702c-6008-4b5e-9b4c-1af05444d292 |
| Keywords | Drama; history play; encyclopaedic writing; Tom Stoppard |
| Description | The article looks at Tom Stoppard's latest (and, possibly, last) play Leopoldstadt as encyclopedia. It presents the notion of encyclopedic fiction as introduced by Mendelson (1976) and developed by others, such as Clark (1992) and most recently O'Meara (2021), who applied it to autobiography. It considers two aspects of literary encyclopedia: the descriptive content and the self-reflexive nature of such writing. It studies themes included in Leopoldstadt, such as the Jewish identity and antisemitism, which constitute the descriptive element of the historical encyclopedic work, as well as various typical features of Stoppardian drama and stagecraft, which represent the self-reflexive nature of Leopoldstadt as a literary encyclopedia. |
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