Decoding visual and acoustic signals: Epistemological uncertainty in Tom Stoppard’s After Magritte and Artist Descending a Staircase

• Authors: Uchman Jadwiga

Title variants

PL

Rozszyfrowywanie sygnałów wizualnych i akustycznych: „After Magritte” i „Artist Descending a Staircase” Toma Stopparda

• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The paper discusses two plays of Tom Stoppard, After Magritte and Artist Descending a Staircase, from the perspective of the uncertainty pertaining to the possibility of perceiving and adequately describing the reality. The plays employ intertextual references to two modern painters whose names are included in the titles of the dramas and who are known to have experimented in their artistic ventures. In two series of pictures, The Key of Dreams and The Use of Words, Magritte dealt with the difficulties connected with representing reality in pictorial and linguistic terms, while Beauchamp tried to present not only three dimensionality but also movement on the two dimensional canvas. Apart from referring to art, Stoppard’s pieces are also a kind of who-done-it, with each of them trying to solve a mystery. After Magritte discloses the solution of the identity of the strange figure the characters saw in the street and also logically explains the strange opening and closing stage images. Being a radio play, Artist Descending a Staircase, teaches the audience to decode aural signals and demonstrates that, similar to objects of visual perception, they may be decoded in different ways. The two dramas discussed thus deal with the relative quality of reality, whose perception and description depends on individual sensitivity of a concrete person.

PL

Artykuł analizuje dwie sztuki współczesnego dramaturga angielskiego, Toma Stopparda: „After Magritte” i „Artist Descending a Staircase”. Obydwa dramaty nawiązują do twórczości malarzy – w pierwszym przypadku jest to Rene Magritte, belgijski surrealista, w drugim zaś Francuz-kubista – Marcel Duchamp. „After Magritte” zaczyna się od surrealistycznej sceny, która zostaje wytłumaczona w logiczny sposób w trakcie dramatu. Sztukę kończy równie surrealistyczna scena, która nie jest przyjmowana w ten sposób ponieważ widzowie otrzymują w trakcie jej tworzenia wszelkie potrzebne informacje. Z kolei „Artysta schodzący po schodach” to teatr radiowy. Nagranie magnetofonowe staje się podstawą do wyjaśnienia sprawy śmierci jednej z głównych postaci. W trakcie dramatu Stoppard uczy słuchacza rozszyfrowywać sygnały akustyczne, co prowadzi do stwierdzenia, że na taśmie zarejestrowano nie morderstwo, ale nieszczęśliwy wypadek.

Keywords

EN

Stoppard; „Artist Descending a Staircase”; „After Magritte”; aural and visual signals

PL

Stoppard; „After Magritte”; „Artist Descending a Staircase”; sygnały wizualne i akustyczne

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Gdański
• Journal: Beyond Philology: An International Journal of Linguistics, Literary Studies and English Language Teaching
• Year: 2018
• Issue: 15/4
• Pages: 87-100

Dates

published

2018

Contributors

author

Uchman Jadwiga

• Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Zawodowa w Płocku

References

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