Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966) and William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1602): Intertextual Dialogic Relation.
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Date
2020-12
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Publisher
UNIVERSITE MOULOUD MAMMERI TIZI-OUZOU
Abstract
This piece of research is concerned with the comparison of two famous English
playwrights’ works: William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1602) and Tom Stoppard’s
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966). To explore the intertextual dialogic
relation between the two plays, I borrowed Mikhail Bakhtin’s thoughts; namely, the
concepts of Heteroglossia as developed in his Discourse in the Novel (1973) and
Carnivalesque developed in the book Rabelais and his World published in (1965). My
dissertation fell into two chapters. In the first chapter, I have looked at how Stoppard’s
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966) is a possible response to Shakespeare’s
Hamlet (1602). In doing so, I have focused on the language used by Stoppard in his play
and the way he echoes the Shakespearean lines. The second chapter is devoted to analyzing
carnivalesque forms in both plays and how Stoppard uses parody as both a way of
debunking Shakespeare’s seriousness and a tactic to depict the modern man’s view of the
universe.It has been demonstrated that in spite of the fact that several centuries separate
the two plays, Stoppard’s intention is to reply to Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1602) in terms of
language and characterization, through his absurdist tragic comedy Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead (1966).
Description
30cm.; 52p.+cd
Keywords
Comparaison, intertextuality, dialogism, Heteoglossia, Carnivalesque, parody,debunking, tragic comedy
Citation
Literature and Civilization