Incorporating And Challenging Tradition

This thesis is a study on the realistic/non-realistic style of Harold Pinter's plays in the postmodern context. To appropriate Linda Hutcheon's label "paradoxical" on postmodernism, Pinter's play may be featured by the paradoxes in his play: realistic and non-realistic, traditional and non-traditional, conventional and non-conventional. Through analyzing both the realistic and non-realistic elements in Pinter's setting, plot and characterization respectively, this thesis attempts to find out the relationship between this couple of seemingly opposites.In Pinter's play, the realistic, traditional and conventional aspects are usually the beginning of the journey to the non-realistic, non-traditional and non-conventional essence of uncertainty. In light of Francois Lyotard, Pinter's play is to investigate the preestablished rules and category of traditional realism. It is a "de-doxifying" strategy of postmodernism. During this "de-doxifying" process, Pinter incorporates some realistic, traditional and conventional elements. In order to point to conventions as conventions and thus to de-naturalize the things we take as natural or given;Pinter employs traditional forms and expectations and at the same time undermines both. In short, Pinter incorporates and challenges the realist theatrical tradition.