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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.
List 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
About the author
Susan Hollis Merritt
