Travesties

The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature | 2003 | 663 words | Copyright

Travesties, a comedy by T. Stoppard, performed 1974, published 1975.

The play is largly set, with various time shifts, in Zurich during the First World War, where Lenin, Joyce, and Tristan Tzara happened to be residing; they appear as characters, as does the marginally historical figure of Henry Carr (1894–1962), through whose memories much of the action is portrayed. Stoppard produces from a minor incident from Ellman's life of Joyce a theatrical, informative, and witty commentary on the birth of Dada, the writing of Ulysses, and the genesis of the doctrine of Socialist Realism, and on the nature of the artist as revolutionary or conformist.

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MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Travesties." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. 29 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Travesties." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. (May 29, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-Travesties.html

MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Travesties." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Retrieved May 29, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-Travesties.html

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