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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.
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The Theatre of Harold Pinter offers a unique assesment of one of Britain's most influential dramatists, combining a chronological survey of Pinter's entire work for the stage with a series of incisive critical essays from leading scholars.
Harold Pinter's work forms a cornerstone of the dramatic literature of the contemporary British stage. This book offers a critical examination of his dramatic writing over four decades, from The Room (1957) to Ashes to Ashes (1996).
Traces the assimilation of the Absurb Drama into the British way of life in the hands of Harold Pinter, it shows Pinter's development toward a kind of tragi-comedy that is purely his own.
Michael Billington's engrossing biography examines Pinter's work in the context of his life. Through extended conversations with Pinter and interviews with his friends and colleagues, Billington creates a portrait of the man as well as the artist, from Pinter's Hackney childhood to his Nobel Prize, discussing his writing for stage and screen, as well as his fiction and poetry, his acting and directing, his political activity, his friendships, his two marriages and his passion for cricket. He emerges as a man of infinite complexity whose imaginative world is shaped by his private character. This new edition includes a full transcript of the Nobel lecture, as well as an additional chapter written in the aftermath of Harold Pinter's death in December 2008. 'The foremost representative of British drama in the second half of the twentieth century.' The Swedish Academy citation on awarding Harold Pinter the Nobel Prize for Literature, 2005'Enthralling... An open-sesame into Pinter's work... A valuable book. And absorbing: I found it virtually unputdownable.' Financial Times'No reader of this book will doubt that its subject is a man of the highest artistic stature.' Sunday Telegraph
For all their attempts to "own" language, Pinter's characters discover that words constitute alienable property; that language forms, de-forms, and re-forms subjectivity; that, as a system preceding the individual, language carries embedded within it the values, desires, and imperatives of the Other - the dominant cultural order. By introducing questions of subject position and ideology into his discussion, author Marc Silverstein shows how the plays exhibit a political dimension largely ignored by the bulk of Pinter criticism, which attempts to classify his oeuvre as a form of absurdist drama. It is Silverstein's contention that Pinter does not concern himself with the fate of the individual lost in an incomprehensible and meaningless universe (the "absurdist" Pinter), but instead explores the vicissitudes of living within ideological, discursive, and social structures that always exceed the subject.
First published in 1983, Harold Pinter is an original study into the work of one of Britain’s foremost dramatists. The book celebrates Pinter’s elusiveness as a writer. It considers his position as a specifically contemporary writer of the post-modernist tradition, and explores his use of language as a sophisticated means of non-communication, acting as a smokescreen behind which his characters lie. The book presents the language games used by Pinter according to their strategic importance, beginning with his earlier works and suggesting a chronological progression. It also discusses Pinter’s later developments, such as the screenplay for The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Harold Pinter is ideal for anyone with an interest in the work and literary techniques of contemporary writers and dramatists.