Harold Pinter's The dumb waiter / / edited by Mary F. Brewer.

• Superior document: Dialogue ; 6
• TeilnehmendeR: Brewer, Mary F.
• Year of Publication: 2009
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Dialogue (Rodopi (Firm)) ; 6.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (286 p.)
• Notes: Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

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.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material -- A Realist-Naturalist Pinter Revisited / Naoko Yagi -- The Dumb Waiter: Realism and Metaphor / Radmila Nastić -- (Re)Thinking Harold Pinter’s Comedy of Menace / Basil Chiasson -- Feeding Power: Pinter, Bakhtin, and Inverted Carnival / David Pattie -- Return of the Referent / Varun Begley -- “Disorder… in a Darkened Room:” the Juridico-Political Space of The Dumb Waiter / Juliet Rufford -- High Art or Popular Culture: Traumatic conflicts of representation and postmodernism in Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter / Catherine Rees -- Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter: Negotiating the boundary between “high” and “low” culture / Michael Patterson -- ‘The Ironic Con Game’ Revisited: Pinter's The Dumb Waiter, a Key to Courage / Penelope Prentice -- The “Other” Within Us: the Rubin’s Vase of Class in The Dumb Waiter / Jonathan Shandell -- Anti-Ritual, Critical Domestication and Representational Precision in Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter / Lance Norman -- “Mixed feelings about words:” Language, politics and the ethics of inter-subjectivity in The Dumb Waiter / Mary F. Brewer -- Unpacking the Pinteresque in The Dumb Waiter and Beyond / Marc E. Shaw -- The First Last Look in the Shadows: Pinter and the Pinteresque / Anne Luyat -- Essay Abstracts -- About the Authors -- Index.