The Frankfurt School's discourse on modernism has seldom been linked to contemporary drama, though the questions of aesthetics and politics explored by T.W. Adorno and others seem especially germane to the plays of Harold Pinter, which span high and low cultural forms and move freely from hermetic modernism to political engagement. Examining plays from 1958 to 1996, Varun Begley'sHarold Pinter and the Twilight of Modernism argues that Pinter's work simultaneously embodies the modernist principle of negation and the more fluid aesthetics of the postmodern. Pinter is arguably one of the most popular and perplexing of modern dramatists writing in English. His plays prefigured, then chronicled, the crumbling divide between modernism and its historical 'others:' popular entertainment, politically committed art, and technological mass culture. Begley sheds new light on Pinter's work by applying the methods and problems of cultural studies discourse. Viewing his plays as a series of responses to fundamental aesthetic and political questions within modernism, Begley argues that, collectively, they narrate a prehistory of the postmodern.

This Reader's Guide synthesises the key criticism on Pinter's work over the last half century. Andrew Wyllie and Catherine Rees examine critical approaches and reactions to the major plays, charting the controversies which have arisen in response to Pinter's critiques of political and sexual issues. They consider criticism from the press and academics, on the themes of Absurdism, politics and gender identity. By placing this criticism in its historical context, this guide illustrates a transition from bewilderment and outrage to affection, fascination - and more outrage.

The book reconnoiters the New World Order of Postmodernism in five plays The Room (1957), The Birthday Party (1957), The Caretaker (1960), The Homecoming (1965) and Celebration (2000) of Harold Pinter. With culturally structured, incomprehensibly manipulated, dual and fragmented characters, Harold Pinter analyses the ambiguities of political system. It is perhaps the System that forcibly drags Stanley to a world of systems in The Birthday Party. The situation of Ruth in The Homecoming clearly indicates the inevitable grip of this System. The last play Celebration overtly ridicules the very political system we approve of wherein the strategy consultants and the corporate people define the organized mechanism of this SYSTEM! The internalization of power which the power structures of societies and politics possess, appears largely in his plays, providing postmodernism its duality. Pinter offers us a true picture of our postmodernist culture an apocalyptic world at the edge of civilization.

"This is a collection of ten long essays arranged around the primordial subject of realism and non-realism, or anti-realism, in the drama, as this subject manifests itself in modern Europe and contemporary America from Ibsen to Shaw to the symbolists, expressionists, surrealists, dadaists, futurists, and absurdists. This book treats not only the issue of realism versus anti-realism in theater from a practical as well as a theoretical point of view. It also treats at least two subjects related to this issue: the superfical or bourgeois realism that has long crippled the theater versus the critical and sometimes poetic realism that liberates it; and the avant-garde, the rearguard, and the middle-to-advanced artistic ground in between claimed by Bertolt Brecht and Harold Pinter. Special attention is paid, moreover, to the first thoroughgoing American avant-garde dramatist, Gertrude Stein. In sum, this book treats the subject of realism and non-realism from the point of view of the theater's ability to create not only the illusion of reality onstage, but also the reality of illusion"--Publisher's description, back cover.

Using Martin Esslin's "invention" - the Theatre of the Absurd - to examine Pinter's works, Wong brings the complexities and intricacies of the plays to the forefront, provoking readers and audiences to reconsider and problematize more conventional studies of his plays.

This important book offers a thematic collection of critical essays, ideal for undergraduate courses on modern British theatre, on Harold Pinter's theatrical works, alongside new interviews with contemporary theatre practitioners. The life and works of Harold Pinter (1930–2008), a pivotal figure in British theatre, have been widely discussed, debated and celebrated internationally. For over five decades, Pinter's work traversed and redefined various forms and genres, constantly in dialogue with, and often impacting the work of, other writers, artists and activists. Combining a reconsideration of key Pinter scholarship with new contexts, voices and theoretical approaches, this book opens up fresh insights into the author's work, politics, collaborations and his enduring status as one of the world's foremost dramatists. Three sections re-contextualize Pinter as a cultural figure; explore and interrogate his influence on contemporary British playwriting; and offer a series of original interviews with theatre-makers engaging in the staging of Pinter's work today. Reconsiderations of Pinter's relationship to literary and theatrical movements such as Modernism and the Theatre of the Absurd; interrogations of the role of class, elitism and religious and cultural identity sit alongside chapters on Pinter's personal politics, specifically in relation to the Middle East.

This collection of essays focuses on one of Harold Pinter’s most popular and challenging plays, The Dumb Waiter, while addressing also a range of significant issues current in Pinter studies and which are applicable beyond this play. The interesting and provocative dialogues between established and emerging scholars featured here provide close readings of The Dumb Waiter, within relevant cultural and historical contexts and from a range of theoretical perspectives. The essays range over issues of autobiography and theater, genre studies, and the impact of Pinter’s political activism on his dramatic production, among others. The collection is also concerned with the meaning of the play when assessed against other example’s of Pinter’s work, both dramatic and non-dramatic writing. Each contributor shows a gift for presenting a complex argument in an accessible style, making this book an important resource for a wide range of readers, from undergraduates to postgraduates and specialist researchers. The collection offers essays that approach The Dumb Waiter, from an interdisciplinary perspective and as both a literary and dramatic text. Thus, the book should be of equal significance to those encountering Pinter within the context of English Studies, drama, and performance.

Harold Pinter provides an up-to-date analysis and reappraisal concerning the work of one of the most studied and performed dramatists in the world. Drawing extensively from The Harold Pinter Archive at the British Library as well as reviews and other critical materials, this book offers new insights into previously established views about his work. The book also analyses and reappraises specific key historical and contemporary productions, including a selection of Pinter’s most significant screenplays. In particular, this volume seeks to assess Pinter’s critical reputation and legacy since his death in 2008. These include his position as a political writer and political activist – from disassociation and neutrality on the subject until relatively late in his career when his drama sought to explicitly address questions of political dissent and torture by totalitarian regimes. The book revisits some familiar territories such as Pinter’s place as a British absurdist and the role memory plays in his work, but it also sets out to explore new territories such as Pinter’s changing attitudes towards gender in the light of #MeToo and queer politics and how in particular a play such as The Caretaker (1960) through several key productions has brought the issues of race into sharper focus. Part of the Routledge Modern and Contemporary Dramatist series, Harold Pinter provides an essential and accessible guide to the dramatists’ work.

The book is a study of Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard, arguably the two most eminent British playwrights of the past sixty years or so, from a perspective of what it describes as a poetics of postmodern drama. Arguing for the application of Linda Hutcheon’s model of postmodernism to the study of drama, Towards a Poetics of Postmodern Drama shows that postmodern drama should be seen as a self-consciously contradictory and double-coded phenomenon, one which simultaneously inscribes and subverts the conventional categories of dramatic representation. In spite of its indebtedness to Beckett’s Absurdist and Brecht’s Epic theaters, postmodern drama should not be conflated with either. This is primarily because postmodern drama retains a critical edge towards contemporary reality in a manner which Hutcheon very aptly terms as a ‘complicitous critique’. The book demonstrates that both Pinter and Stoppard are pre-eminently postmodern in their treatment of issues such as the human subject, the notion of truth, historical verifiability and linguistic reference. Pinter’s preoccupation with non-referential modes of language-use, the role of power in the construction of the subject, and unreliable memories is as potent a way of disrupting the representational status of drama as Stoppard’s repeated recourse to devices such as parody, theater-within-theater and the fictional treatment of history.

Let down by the uncertainties of memory, language, and their own family units, the characters in Harold Pinter’s plays endure persistent struggles to establish their own identities. Eroding the Language of Freedom re-examines how identity is shaped in these plays, arguing that the characters’ failure to function as active members of society speaks volumes to Pinter’s ideological preoccupation with society’s own inadequacies. Pinter described himself as addressing the state of the world through his plays, and in the linguistic games, emotional balancing acts, and recurring scenarios through which he put his characters, readers and audiences can see how he perceived that world.