Read more
This volume is the first to provide a book-length study of Pinter's overtly political activity. With chapters on political drama, poetry, and speeches, it charts a consistent tension between aesthetics and politics through Pinter's later career and defines the politics of the work in terms of a pronounced sensory dimension and capacity to affect audiences. The book brings to light unpublished letters and drafts from the Pinter Archive in the British Library and draws his political poems and speeches, which have previously been overshadowed by his plays, into the foreground. Intended for students, instructors, and researchers in drama and theatre, performance studies, literature, and media studies, this book celebrates Pinter's later life and work by discerning a coherent political voice and project and by registering the complex ways that project troubles the divide between aesthetics and politics.
List of contents
1. Introduction: On the Meaning of Late, Affect, and Aestheticizing Politics.- 2. The "Early" Years: A "More Precisely Political" Drama.- 3. Pinter's Political Dramas in the 1990s and After: Dialogue Is the Thing.- 4. The Political Verse: A Poetics of Force.- 5. A "Citizen of the World": Aestheticizing Politics.- 6. The Nobel Lecture: Artist and Citizen Converge.-
About the author
Basil Chiasson
is Research Fellow at the University of Leeds. He is a member of the AHRC-funded ‘Harold Pinter: Histories and Legacies’ research team. Previous publications include contributions to
Modern Drama
,
The Theatre of Harold Pinter
and
Harold Pinter's The Dumb Waiter
.
Summary
Examines Pinter's often overlooked work in alternative media, from poetry to speeches
Draws extensively on little-accessed archival material to bring further insights into Pinter's creative process
Views Pinter's political output through the lens of affect
Additional text
“This book was very well written, and Chiasson went above and beyond to explain to readers how Pinter’s later works used both affect and aesthetics to convey their messages. … this book would be important to anyone who wants to study politics, poetics, rhetoric, and the media. This could be a particularly good book for a class that is studying media and politics.” (Katy Johnson, CBQ Communication Booknotes Quarterly, Vol. 49 (2), 2018)
Report
"This book was very well written, and Chiasson went above and beyond to explain to readers how Pinter's later works used both affect and aesthetics to convey their messages. ... this book would be important to anyone who wants to study politics, poetics, rhetoric, and the media. This could be a particularly good book for a class that is studying media and politics." (Katy Johnson, CBQ Communication Booknotes Quarterly, Vol. 49 (2), 2018)
