Pinter and Modern Tragicomedy PDF Download

Author: Frank S. Kastor
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 24

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Book Description

Author: Victor L. Cahn
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1725230518
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
During the past century, artists have been preoccupied with the search for meaning in a fragmented world. In this book Victor L. Cahn suggests that the plays of Harold Pinter dramatize how such a search leads characters to try to establish security through control of territory and people. The resulting conflict often manifests itself in a gender battle, in which men dominate the physical arena and women the emotional. The innate tension between the sexes is both comic and unnerving, but also reflects humanity's eternal quest for meaning and identity.

Author: Verna A. Foster
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351885340
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
Focusing on European tragicomedy from the early modern period to the theatre of the absurd, Verna Foster here argues for the independence of tragicomedy as a genre that perceives and communicates human experience differently from the various forms of tragedy, comedy, and the drame (serious drama that is neither comic nor tragic). Foster posits that, in the sense of the dramaturgical and emotional fusion of tragic and comic elements to create a distinguishable new genre, tragicomedy has emerged only twice in the history of drama. She argues that tragicomedy first emerged and was controversial in the Renaissance; and that it has in modern times replaced tragedy itself as the most serious and moving of all dramatic genres. In the first section of the book, the author analyzes the name 'tragicomedy' and the genre's problems of identity; then goes on to explore early modern tragicomedies by Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger. A transitional chapter addresses cognate genres. The final section of the book focuses on modern tragicomedies by Ibsen, Chekhov, Synge, O'Casey, Williams, Ionesco, Beckett and Pinter. By exploring dramaturgical similarities between early modern and modern tragicomedies, Foster demonstrates the persistence of tragicomedy's generic markers and provides a more precise conceptual framework for the genre than has so far been available.

Author: Daniel Knapper
Publisher: Gale, Cengage Learning
ISBN: 1535854499
Category : Study Aids
Languages : en
Pages : 17

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Book Description
Gale Researcher Guide for: Tragicomedies: William Shakespeare, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter is selected from Gale's academic platform Gale Researcher. These study guides provide peer-reviewed articles that allow students early success in finding scholarly materials and to gain the confidence and vocabulary needed to pursue deeper research.

Author: Aslı Tekinay
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527551636
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
This book provides a holistic approach to Harold Pinter’s plays, from his first play, The Room (1957), to his last play, Celebration (1999). The book is divided into three chapters, organized thematically. The first chapter discusses the early plays—the so-called comedies of menace—concerning the central tropes of secluded settings, intrusion from the outside, and disintegration of the self. The next chapter analyzes Pinter’s memory plays, concentrating on how characters shelter themselves from intrusions through silences and lies. The third chapter examines power games and abuse of power in political plays. The book contributes to the field of Pinter studies by pursuing the thematic, linguistic, and formal elements integral to his aesthetic productions, and delineates the properties that serve as constants in Pinter’s dramatic oeuvre, thus justifying the term Pinteresque: pauses and silences, subtext, anxiety, violence, menace, vulnerability, victimization, intrusion, and power games. The discussions highlight the presence of a solid foundation for his drama—such as his conviction that the past is in the present—and connect all the plays to one another.

Author: John Orr
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349215627
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
This study examines the historical relationship between tragicomedy in the modernist theatre and the performative culture of Western consumer societies. While discussing a wide range of playwrights, it focusses specifically on the work of Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Sam Shepard. Their plays, it is argued, illuminate the forms of pleasure, fear, performance and corruption which dominate our daily lives. Tragicomedy is seen as unique becuae of the existential playfulness and confusion of its protagonists, and because of its muted vision of apocalypse in the nuclear age.

Author: Sidney Homan
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
ISBN: 9780838752388
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
"Pinter's Odd Man Out records Sidney Homan's experience directing the playwright's Old Times for both stage and television. His most commercially successful play, and surely one of his best, no other work of Pinter's has generated more critical and scholarly commentary - or more varied, sometimes conflicting readings." "In the two opening chapters Homan surveys the theatrical and critical history of the play before describing the "generic" world of Pinter that provides the context of Old Times: secluded rooms, their occupants, and the visitor who, in seeking entrance, challenges the room's exclusive yet deceptive serenity; the outside and the threat it poses; the subtext pressing on the dialogue; the power of the past and perception; the "presence" of the play itself; characters who function as artists; the issue of gender; mother and father figures; and the silence of Pinter's pauses." "Homan then describes his company's preparations for the performance, ranging from the director's concept, the set, props, costumes, lighting, and music to blocking and the rehearsal period. After his own account of the stage production and the ways in which the audience "taught" the performers through their reactions to and discoveries about the play, Homan turns to his actors (Stephanie Dugan, Thomas Pender, and Sandra Langsner) who, in their own words, describe how they wrestled with the characters of Kate, Deeley, and Anna from rehearsals to performance." "A chapter on "The Camera as Guest" records the experience of filming the stage play. Here the focus is on the technological and aesthetic differences between the media of television and the stage, and what effect such differences had on the filmed version of Old Times. To what degree does the camera allow the director to assert more control? What changes in blocking, set, and lighting were required?" "In an appendix Homan looks at Carol Reed's 1950s film Odd Man Out, which figures prominently in Old Times, and which may have been a source (in a highly flexible use of that term) for the play." "On the surface, Pinter's Odd Man Out concentrates on a single play. In reality, it is about the ways in which people in the theatre approach a production, the process they go through from rehearsals to opening night, and the complex interaction among playwright, director, actors, and audience. It also raises the issue of what happens when a work intended for the stage is translated to another medium, such as television. If the book at times suggests that the worlds of the scholar and the theatre professional are different, indeed incompatible in some ways, it also shows how the two professions can learn from each other."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Author: Elin Diamond
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
ISBN: 9780838750681
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Examines the basis of Harold Pinter's tense comedy and how it functions in his plays as well as covering the major drama from The Room to Other Places. Diamond argues that the metaphysical fear and emptiness so characteristic of the Pinter situation are inseparable from his use and abuse of literary and popular comic traditions.

Author: Mary F. Brewer
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9042025565
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
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.

Author: Lois Gordon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135347395
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
This comprehensive and authoritative casebook includes cornerstone essays on Pinter's creative process, his politics, film adaptations, and acting career. It also includes a collection of photos found nowhere else that document Pinter's "golden time"--his early acting days in Ireland--, a substantial introduction, a chronology, and bibliography.