Overview

Pinter in Play provides a survey of diverse readings of the Harold Pinter canon organized around and presented in terms of the major critical schools of the past twenty-five years, from New Criticism to deconstruction to poststructuralism. Reflecting on the cultural, personal, sociological, and philosophical contexts of these diverse critical perspectives and the critics who express them, this book is equally about the act or the art of literary criticism and itself an important work of literary criticism. Drawing on interviews with Pinter scholars, Susan Hollis Merritt shows how critics ""play"" with Pinter and thereby seriously enforce personal, professional, and political affiliations. Cutting across traditional academic and nonacademic boundaries, Merritt argues that greater cooperation and collaboration among critics can resolve conflicts, promote greater social equity, and foster ameliorative critical and cultural change.

Full Product Details

Author:   Susan Hollis Merritt
Publisher:   Duke University Press
Imprint:   Duke University Press
Edition:   Enlarged, With a New Preface by the Author
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.70cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.726kg
ISBN:  

9780822316749

ISBN 10:   0822316749
Pages:   367
Publication Date:   07 September 1995
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Preface to the Paperback Edition xi Preface xvii Introduction xxi Abbreviations xxix Perspectives on Pinter's Critical Evolution 1. Progress and Fashion in Pinter Studies 3 2. Aims, Kinds, and Contexts of Criticism 25 3. Criticism as Strategy 49 4. Pinter's Semantic Uncertainty and Critically Inescapable Certainties 66 Some Strategies of Pinter Critics: Themes, Rituals, Games, Fantasies, Dreams 5. Thematic Tactics and Ritural Ruses: Searches for Meaning 89 6. Psychoanalytic Maneuvers: Smoke Screens against Recognition 108 7. Some Other Language Games: Linguistic Parlays and Parleys 137 8. Cultural Politics 171 Social Relations of Critical and Cultural Change 9. Contingencies of Value Judgments of Pinter's Plays 213 10. The Case of Pinter: Toward Theory as Practice in Critical and Cultural Change 245 Notes 277 Works Cited 299 Index 329

Reviews

An original and important book relevant to current general interests in literary theory and the problems of interpretation as well as to Pinter scholarship and criticism. Merritt has produced a work of 'metacriticism' that I would expect to remain of permanent value. Her knowledge of Pinter scripts, performances of them, and of Pinter critics and reviewers is vast, and parallel to her demonstrations of changes in critical strategies and perspectives, she evokes a sense of the changes Pinter has gone through as a playwright. <br>--Michael Steig, Simon Fraser University<br>

An original and important book relevant to current general interests in literary theory and the problems of interpretation as well as to Pinter scholarship and criticism. Merritt has produced a work of 'metacriticism' that I would expect to remain of permanent value. Her knowledge of Pinter scripts, performances of them, and of Pinter critics and reviewers is vast, and parallel to her demonstrations of changes in critical strategies and perspectives, she evokes a sense of the changes Pinter has gone through as a playwright. -Michael Steig, Simon Fraser University

""An original and important book relevant to current general interests in literary theory and the problems of interpretation as well as to Pinter scholarship and criticism. Merritt has produced a work of ‘metacriticism’ that I would expect to remain of permanent value. Her knowledge of Pinter scripts, performances of them, and of Pinter critics and reviewers is vast, and parallel to her demonstrations of changes in critical strategies and perspectives, she evokes a sense of the changes Pinter has gone through as a playwright.""-Michael Steig, Simon Fraser University

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