Re-Inspecting the Crack in the Chimney: Chaos Theory from Ibsen to Stoppard

In 1978, Robert Brustein observed that Ibsen's The Master Builder subtly undermined the tenets of naturalism for which both the play and its author are usually remembered. Here, William W. Demastes suggests that, though lacking precise paradigms when they wrote the play and the critique, Ibsen and Brustein both approach the understanding of human interaction in ways that are currently explained through the ‘new’ scientific paradigm of chaos theory. This essay presents a general summary of chaos theory, applies it to The Master Builder, suggests ways in which Ibsen anticipates the postmodernists, and how, in turn, chaos theory can help in comprehending several paths that the theatre has followed since the inception of postmodernism. William W. Demastes is associate professor of English at Louisiana State University, and is author of Beyond Naturalism: a New Realism in American Theatre (1988). This essay is an extension of his book, and is designed in part as in introduction to his next book-length study, on the confluence of scientific and dramatic thought in the twentieth century.

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NEWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

PEDIATRICS ◽

10.1542/peds.4.1.142 ◽

1949 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

pp. 142-144

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Medical Center ◽

Associate Professor ◽

Johns Hopkins Hospital ◽

State University ◽

New York University ◽

Louisiana State University ◽

School Of Medicine ◽

National Foundation ◽

Infantile Paralysis

The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis has awarded postgraduate fellowships in the fields of scientific research, physical medicine and public health. Three of the new fellows will devote their time to research projects in the field of pediatrics. Dr. John J. Osborn, of Larchmont, N.Y., has already begun his project at New York University—Bellevue Medical Center under Drs. L. Emmett Holt, Jr., Professor of Pediatrics, and Colin MacLeod, Professor of Microbiology; Dr. Paul Harold Hardy, Jr., of Baltimore, Md., and Dr. David I. Schrum, of Houston, Texas, will start their work July 1, respectively, at Johns Hopkins Hospital, under Drs. Francis F. Schwentker, Pediatrician-in-Chief, and Horace L. Hodes, Associate Professor of Pediatrics; and at Louisiana State University School of Medicine under Drs. Myron E. Wegman, Professor of Pediatrics, and G. John Buddingh, Professor of Microbiology.

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Tara Powell, The Intellectual in Twentieth-Century Southern Literature (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2012, $42.50). Pp. 288. isbn978 0 8071 3898 4.

Journal of American Studies ◽

10.1017/s0021875812002216 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 47 (1) ◽

pp. 287-288

Author(s):

TED ATKINSON

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Southern Literature ◽

Baton Rouge ◽

State University ◽

Louisiana State University

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Comic Collisions: Convention, Rage, and Order

New Theatre Quarterly ◽

10.1017/s0266464x00002451 ◽

1987 ◽

Vol 3 (12) ◽

pp. 303-316 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Susan Carlson

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Henry James ◽

Associate Professor ◽

Full Length ◽

The Novel ◽

State University ◽

Modern Drama ◽

Happy Ending ◽

Critical Aspects

How can the socially critical aspects of comedy be reconciled with a ‘happy ending’ which seems to affirm the existing order of things? This perennial problem has become acute in a period when both playwrights and comic performers are increasingly conscious of the dangers inherent in the stereotyping – racial, sexual, and hierarchical – on which so much comedy depends. In this article, Susan Carlson looks at some recent ‘meta-comedies’ which have used the form, as it were, to expose itself – notably, Trevor Griffiths's Comedians, Peter Barnes's Laughter, Susan Hayes's Not Waving, and Caryl Churchill's Cloud Nine – and analyzes their responses to comedy, which range from the despairing to the affirmative. She concludes that only Churchill has found a positive way of ‘connecting the painful recognitions of twentieth-century dissociations to comic hope’. Susan Carlson is Associate Professor of English at lowa State University. In addition to numerous articles on modern drama and the novel, she has published a full-length study of the plays of Henry James, and is currently working on a book about women in comedy.

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