| The dissertation argues that what Harold Pinter is doing in his dramaturgy can best be understood by focusing on the sense of uncertainty that characterizes the experience most spectators have with his drama and by examining the ways in which he plays with accepted dramatic conventions to undermine the expectations the spectators have when they watch a play. The first chapter looks at the critical reactions to a few moments from The Birthday Party to demonstrate that commentators typically treat Pinter's plays as they would most modern drama and, instead of accounting for the experience of the spectators, either ignore the uncertainty in Pinter's plays or try to explain it away by positing what they take to be Pinter's meaning. Yet, as is revealed by the contrast in the second chapter between the opening moments of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire and the opening moments of Pinter's The Homecoming, Pinter actually subverts the techniques playwrights traditionally use to make meaning in plays. The third chapter presents a more comprehensive examination of The Homecoming, focusing on how Pinter plays with the spectators' responses by manipulating many different structures and conventions of the drama, and in the fourth, fifth and sixth chapters, Pinter's manipulation of action in The Dumb Waiter, character in The Caretaker, and setting in Old Times are isolated to explore in detail how Pinter undermines the spectators' expectations concerning the classic unities of the drama. The final chapter examines "self-referential" moments in Pinter's plays, moments in which the language pierces the fourth wall to speak directly to the spectators about their experience of the plays. In essence, these moments explicitly point to what Pinter is always doing in his plays, since they address the spectators' sense of uncertainty and make them aware of themselves as active participants in the dramatic process. The difficulty the spectators have in "understanding" Pinter's plays forces them to contemplate the processes by which they reach understanding, leading them to ask how they know anything in a play and, ultimately, how they know anything in life. |
