“There is No Proof”: Fermat’s Last Theorem and Historical Reconstruction in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia

Torre Puckett

doi:10.1515/jcde-2019-0024

Article

“There is No Proof”: Fermat’s Last Theorem and Historical Reconstruction in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia

Torre Puckett

Published/Copyright: November 15, 2019

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From the journal Journal of Contemporary Drama in English Volume 7 Issue 2

Abstract

Fermat’s Last Theorem, which appears as a symbol in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, was announced to be solved only two months after the play premiered. When Stoppard was writing Arcadia, the Theorem was still an unsolvable mystery; to the first audiences who saw the play performed, the Theorem represented a triumph of rediscovery. We may therefore interpret the Theorem’s symbolism in two different ways, both of which contribute to a different reading of the play’s essential question: whether history, discoveries, and art, once lost, are lost forever, or whether they can be recovered in the future.

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Published Online: 2019-11-15

Published in Print: 2019-11-07

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https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2019-0024