The Fusion Of Horizons

Harold Pinter (1930-2008) is one of the most famous playwrights in contemporary England, who has made great achievements not only in stage plays, but also in screenplays. Although many scholars abroad have made intensive studies on Pinter's adapting skills and techniques in one certain screenplay or compared several ones to find the common ground among them, after a careful study of these researches, the author discovers that nobody has covered the perspective of "fusion of horizons". And there are rare researches on Pinter's screenplays in China, so this thesis intends to focus on The French Lieutenant'sWoman--the most successful adaptation of Pinter to discuss his artistic workmanship inadaptation and to prove that Pinter's adaptation reflects the "fusion of horizons". Through the "fusion of horizons", the original novel attains new life while Pinter's persistent style is manifested in the screenplay. Since The French Lieutenant's Woman is the most successful and difficult screenplay of Pinter due to the original novel's popularity and artistic features, thus the research on it will provide a more thorough and valuable viewpoint on Pinter's cinematic talent and the gradual development of his cinematic skills. The explication of Pinter's screenplays as adaptations of novels may yield certain insights into the less accessible dimensions of his works for the stage and trace correspondences between his writings for each medium.The thesis starts with a brief introduction to Harold Pinter as a screenwriter and his screenplays, especially his most successful adaptation The French Lieutenant's Woman. Following the introduction comes the first chapter where a whole picture of philosophical hermeneutics is presented and the postmodern culture is illustrated to show the practical meaning of the adaptation. In this chapter, the concepts of "fore-understanding" and "fusion of horizons" of Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics are introduced to lay the theoretical foundation for the latter discussion. The next two chapters primarily focuse on Pinter's decoding and encoding of the original novel to illustrate how the fusion of horizons is reflected. On the one hand, the essence of the original novel such as the fragmentary narrative, the alternative endings and the manipulative characters, are maintained in the screenplay. On the other hand, the cinematic devices and the game and art object as metaphors which can find echoes in Pinter's previous writings are separately analyzed to discuss Pinter's concrete workmanship. Based on the above analysis, the fourth part analyzes the effect of the adaptation on the aspects of maintaining the soul of the original novel while stamping the painteresque style to the screenplay, as well as the transformation from the temporal narrative of the novel to the spatial narrative of the film medium. On the whole the script is a splendid work which is not only faithful to the soul of the original novel but is also a work of art on its own part. The final part draws a conclusion that the screenplay reflects the "fusion ofhorizons"--Pinter's dramatic pursuit is integrated consciously with the soul of the originalnovel; his fulfilled experience and the artistic talent in adapting allow him to produce his greatest cinematic achievement The French Lieutenant's Woman, a work of art in its own right, the one that stands by itself. However, the theory of "fusion of horizons" can not make sure that all adaptations with fusing horizons could succeed. How to achieve the real fusion of horizons is still a long way to go for the future studies. Nevertheless, all the contemplation in this thesis may not only enlighten a new angle of view to understand Pinter's stage plays, but can also provide some reference to the practice of adapting a novel to a screenplay. Thus the author hopes to provide some enlightening advice to the further interaction and integration between films and novels.