Metaphorical Analysis of Temporality: Tom Stoppard'S Artist Descending A Staircase

Among british contemporary playwrights who are mostly obsessed with the issue of time, tom stoppard applies time-based techniques in majority of his works. his play, artist descending a staircase which is concerned with definition of art and artist, is chosen to be studied. based on paul ricoeur’s theory of ‘narrative time’, focuseing on relationship between narrativity and temporality, this study intends to analyze how narrativity works in terms of temporality. for this purpose, stoppard’s rhetorical structures, mainly encompassing binary opposition, two-faceted characters of the old and young, as well as metaphorical conceptualization, are taken into account to examine which layer of time is stoppard’s focal perspective from which he offers his own outlook. the incidents of the play are interpreted applying ricoeur’s theory of memory and forgetting through time flashbacks with a hermeneutic understanding. this becomes defensible through a modern hermeneutic circle by which the meaning is created out of textual signs. the circular method is justified in the sense that the signs are considered as the parts to reach to the totality of the social context. considering ricoeur’s metaphor of time, the illustrated concepts of art are analyzed in accordance with the way stoppard reveals time. since time resides in the narrative, the approach taken in this study is narratological which concentrates on temporality in the narrative.