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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

William W. Demastes
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Abstract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 10 , Issue 39 , August 1994 , pp. 242 - 254
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

Notes and References

1. Theatre, No. 9 (Spring 1978), p. 21–9;Google Scholar reprinted in Edelstein, Arthur, ed., Images and Ideas in American Culture (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1979), p. 141–57.Google Scholar

2. Hayles, N. Katherine, in Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1990),Google Scholar makes the accurate observation that much of what occurred in the 1970s was anticipated in both the scientific and philosophical communities of prior generations. She observes, equally convincingly, that a cultural predisposition must exist in order for revolutions in thought to take hold, and that such an inclination evolved during the late twentieth century for such a shift in paradigm to occur. So, despite evidence indicating that this paradigm shift was under way well before the 1970s, this decade, culturally speaking, marked the period of a consensus toward shifting paradigms. Hayles observes, for example, that simultaneous to shifts in the scientific community similar shifts in the literary and philosophical community (e. g., via poststructuralism) were occurring.

3. For a readable overview of quantum mechanics, see Hawking, Stephen, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam, 1988);Google Scholar for the more ambitious, I recommend Polkinghorne's, J. C., The Quantum Universe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).Google Scholar For theatrical/dramatic application of such principles and discoveries, see George, David E. R., ‘Quantum Theatre – Potential Theatre: a New Paradigm?’, New Theatre Quarterly, V, No. 18 (1989), p. 171–9;CrossRefGoogle ScholarSchmitt, Natalie Crohn, Actors and Onlookers: Theatre and Twentieth-Century Scientific Views of Nature (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1990);Google Scholar and Demastes, William W., ‘Of Sciences and the Arts: from Influence to Interplay between Natural Philosophy and Drama’, Studies in the Literary Imagination, XXIII, No. 2 (Fall 1991), p. 75–89.Google Scholar

4. Though the term ‘chaos theory’ may be appropriate in this discussion, one must be warned of the fact that the term embraces a very diverse range of fields and applications, each utilizing different visions of the chaos model. In Chaos Bound, Hayles, for example, warns that researchers in these fields prefer such terms as ‘nonlinear dynamics, dynamical systems theory, or, more modestly yet, dynamical systems methods’ (p. 8). The scientific argument for using such terms rather than ‘chaos theory’ is that the term ‘chaos’ has such a rich non-scientific etymology that its application to science cannot be precisely controlled and applied, and that the term ‘theory’ implies a homogeneity in the scientific community that simply does not exist in this area. Each field utilizes and concentrates on different aspects of this new paradigm to the degree that actual points of convergence are often difficult to recognize. For example, information theory has introduced breakthroughs in field systems studies that are often considered part of the chaos theory paradigm, but these are not discussed or described in this essay. With these qualifications in mind, I can recommend, as an accessible overview of the development of chaos theory, Gleick's, James, Chaos: Making a New Science (New York: Viking, 1987).Google Scholar If further qualifications to Gleick's work are necessary, see Hayles, , p. 171–4.Google Scholar

5. Ibsen, Henrik, The Master Builder, in The Complete Major Prose Plays, trans. Fjelde, Rolfe (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1978), p. 854.Google Scholar

6. Here it would be of value to note that Ibsen is unique/original in late nineteenth-century drama, and that I'm not necessarily arguing that he is universally unique. Note, for example, that earlier I suggest the chaos model could very well apply to Hamlet. There are doubtless many works both pre- and post-dating Ibsen to which this model can apply. One aim of introducing this model, in fact, is implicitly to encourage others to test it within their own areas of interest. The remainder of this essay suggests options for the theatre student/scholar; other options certainly exist in many fields of study.

7. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1962.

8. Beckett/Beckett (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

9. The Shape of Chaos: an Interpretation of the Art of Samuel Beckett (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1971).Google Scholar

10. In Brater, Enoch, ed., Beckett at 80/Beckett in Context (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 110–23.Google Scholar

11. The Drama Review, III, No. 2 (Winter 1968), p. 67–76.Google Scholar

12. Arcadia (London: Faber and Faber, 1993), p. 74.Google Scholar

13. In Beyond Naturalism: a New Realism in American Theatre (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1988),Google Scholar I make a general case that American playwrights of the 1980s have undergone a process wherein they challenge the dictates of naturalism by using realism itself to undermine the ‘scientific’ tenets of naturalist realism. But like the various critical assessments I've challenged in this essay for being uninformed about the recent advances in the sciences, this book suffers from a certain imprecision stemming from the fact that I had only recently myself been introduced to chaos theory.

14. ‘When Does Gore Get Gratuitous?’, New York Times, 22 02. 1976, Sec. 2, p. 7.Google Scholar