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Arcadia Essay

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The objectivity of the enlightenment, which explains everything through mathematical and scientific laws, is in itself the impediment within progress because to detach the emotional aspect of reason within rationale results in fragmented knowledge; it is only when both realms of knowledge and emotion intertwine within the genius that progression will readily manifest and prosper in ratiocination. While certain personas and events in Arcadia typify Enlightenment characterization, others depict characterization of personas and events peculiar to Romanticism. Wither exemplifying Enlightenment or Romantic ideals, Arcadia serves to communicate the chaos that transpires when only one realm is effectuated. Arcadia inaugurates the dissonance of the two historical periods that result in pandemonium through Thomasina’s equation. “Each week I plot your equations dot for dot, x’s against y’s in all manner of algebraical relation, and every week they draw themselves as commonplace geometry, as if the world of forms were nothing but arcs and angles. God 's truth, Septimus, if there is an equation for a curve like a bell, there must be an equation for one like a bluebell, and if a bluebell, why not a rose?”(Stoppard, 37). Thomasina’s ultimate goal is not to find a mathematical equation that expresses only perfect geometric shapes, but rather a mathematical equation that evinces all natural forms and occurrences of nature in addition. Septimus is content with the detachment of the two

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