105,490 research outputs found
Harold Pinter
No full textHarold Pinter is one of the most important writers in English of the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century. This brief biography offers fresh insights into his life and work, concentrating on the themes, patterns, relationships, ideas and language common to his life and creative output. Placing Pinter's life and work alongside each other, the study illuminates Pinter's vision of society, politics, gender, sex, violence and human relationships. Drawing upon the full-range of his work, his letters, journalism, and writings about him, Baker combines a biographical approach with close (re)readings of his work to create a fresh perspective on his life and art. The book offers students, academics and readers a rich depiction of Harold Pinter, the man and the writer.Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- 1. Growing Up -- 2. Ireland, Precarious Existence and Marriage -- 3. Early Plays -- 4. Success -- 5. Turning Points -- 6. The 1970s and 1980s -- 7. The 1990s and Beyond: Political Engagement -- 8. Conclusion: Cancer, the Nobel Prize, Mutations of Mortality, Poetry -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- ZHarold Pinter is one of the most important writers in English of the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century. This brief biography offers fresh insights into his life and work, concentrating on the themes, patterns, relationships, ideas and language common to his life and creative output. Placing Pinter's life and work alongside each other, the study illuminates Pinter's vision of society, politics, gender, sex, violence and human relationships. Drawing upon the full-range of his work, his letters, journalism, and writings about him, Baker combines a biographical approach with close (re)readings of his work to create a fresh perspective on his life and art. The book offers students, academics and readers a rich depiction of Harold Pinter, the man and the writer.Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, YYYY. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries
Harold Pinter and the Performance of Power: Considerations of Affect in Select Plays, Screenplays and Films, Poetry and Political Speeches
No full textThis thesis looks at selections of Harold Pinter's work across multiple media: written dramatic texts, screenplays and poetry, activity in theatrical and film production and his political activism. It has been argued that Pinter's dramatic medium is exceeded by movements, intensities and
forces that operate on and circulate within the corporeal bodies of Pinter's 'audiences'. However, approaches to Pinter to date remain overly focused on representation and hermeneutics and tied to a decidedly idealist conception of being, perception and knowledge. I argue that in order to
appreciate the politics of Pinter's aesthetics, readings of Pinter's work need to move in a more decidedly materialist direction. To do so, I enlist the conceptual tools of Gilles Deleuze and felix Guattari, specifically 'affect'. In bringing affect theory to Pinter I illustrate how 'the direct, mutual involvement of language and extra-linguistic forces,1 must be taken into account at every
critical step, and that meaning need be construed as a material process, the expression of forces
acting upon each other. The diversity of Pinter's work is explored over six chapters with a view to its aesthetic disposition and function, how it enters into noteworthy relations with those who engage with it, and how it establishes conditions that are propitious for transitory but ultimately productive trans formative encounters. Proceeding as such necessitates appraisal of ethical and
political positions in relation to Pinter's expression without distinguishing politics from aesthetics - a trend common to intellectual enterprise. Rather, the three keywords in the title of this thesis - performance, power and affect - function as concepts to advance the argument for Pinter's aesthetics as a politics. In considering the aesthetics of Pinter's work in varied media, this thesis invites the reader to see the strategies by which Pinter intervenes in each area as interrelated and political
The city and landscapes beyond Harold Pinter's rooms
No full textPinter's dramas have been labelled as 'absurd', 'mysterious', 'enigmatic', 'taciturn'.
There has been a constant tendency to reduce the idea of the 'Pinteresque' to language
when Pinter is preoccupied with the tensions between reality and the world of the
imagination. He has, actually and accurately, used theatre as a 'critical act' to denote
the abstracted realities, and he has applied his language to embody his world-view - his
concerns in the contemporary capitalist world.
Pinter has journeyed from the room to the outside world, from the private to the public
social space, and has identified an inescapable sense of pessimism and alienation, and
investigated an alarming world of atrocities. There are cities and landscapes beyond
Pinter's rooms, cities peopled by wandering, displaced figures surveying the self-estranged city that is modern consciousness, and landscapes where his people retreat
into the private realms of memory and fantasy.
This thesis explores the virtual geographies beyond Pinter's rooms through the
vocabulary of some modernist theoreticians and social scientists, as there are significant
parallels between their analytical observations and the poetic perceptions of Pinter, a
practising artist, and the phantom images of his characters.
Pinter's plays and film adaptations tend to portray the city as a colonial present, and the
country as a mythological past. The 1970s' plays portray a community of isolation,
urban decay, dispossession and suffering, through the figure of the 'flâneur' - his
characters' subjective experiences, memories and fantasies in the metropolis. In these
memory plays, men and women have different mental landscapes and desires. To some
extent the city is both a male-constructed world and an image of the twentieth century;
in both senses it is anti-human and in decline.
In his 1980s mature plays, Pinter's lyrical interiors and serene landscapes are colonised
by the metropolis. Here Pinter investigates a universally oppressive space filled with
misery and social dislocation. The city destroys humanity in a decaying modem world.
These plays identify the global city as the locus of existential alienation and as the
centre of political power and oppression - a world of brute masculine power.
The last two plays, in this study explore other wastelands of human isolation and
suffering, and criticise the British suspicion of the 'intelligentsia'. Using scenes that are
ingrained in the contemporary audience's physical memory, Pinter makes the
distinction between being an active participant and being a witness, a 'spectator' in this
alarming world. And thus, he criticises the tradition of mockery of the artistic and the
intellectually curious in Britain, and urges a need for a 'politically curious', at politically questioning theatre-going society
The Concept of "Self" in Some Plays by Ibsen, Strindberg, Beckett, Osborne, and Pinter
No full textPhDCentring on Peer Gynt's onion as a symbol of modern
man's "dissolved" self, this thesis is a study of the
changing concept of "self" and its effect on the development
of dramatic technique from Ibsen's Brand and Peer
Gynt, through Strindberg's "dream plays, " to the plays of
the three most influential post-war British playwrights,
Beckett, Osborne, and Pinter.
The aim of this comparative study is not to "prove"
direct influence, but to demonstrate affinities and to
trace the continuing process of the "dissolving self"
from Brand's monumental concept of man as a being essentially
divine, to Beckett's tramps picturing themselves
as worms in a God-forsaken universe, and from Peer Gynt's
uncentred onion self, which still adds up to a tremendous
personality, to Pinter's "classic female figure" who is
divested of personality as well as of self.
The philosophical dissolution of man's essential Godgiven
self and the redefinition of the human personality
in existentialist terms as simply the sum of one's actions,
habits, or roles, has its corollary in dramatic technique,
of which the most radical example is Strindberg's A Dream
Play, where the Dreamer's self is projected on stage, not
as one indelible personality, which is still the case in
Peer Gynt, but as a motley gallery of "dream characters, "
each representing one aspect of the Dreamer's (the poet's)
discontinuous self.
Beckett's Krapp, spooling back the tapes of his
former selves in search of his quintessential "I" and
discovering that the "self" is merely a string of discarded
habits; Osborne's Archie Rice playing for time
against the inevitable annihilation of his inauthentic
comedian's mask by "the man with the hook"; and Pinter's
stupefied Stanley Webber being "crowned" by his persecutors
with a bowler hat, the symbol of conformity, and
hence of non-identity, are all modern counterparts of
Peer Gynt, the "Emperor of Self.
The Franco-German Tandem
No full textSzukala A, Wessels W. The Franco-German Tandem. In: Edwards G, Pijpers A, eds. The Politics of Treaty Reform. The Intergovernmental Conference and Beyond. London: Pinter; 1997: 74-99
Neuropathic pain and diabetes: Focus on mechanisms and potential therapeutic strategies
No full textNeuropathic pain is a challenging condition in clinical practice and a common complication in patients with diabetic neuropathy. In the last decade, several advances in the knowledge of the pathophysiological mechanisms of neuropathic pain have been achieved. Besides the mechanisms of peripheral and central sensitization involving axons, dorsal root ganglion, dorsal horn neurons, and descending modulatory pathways, the role of immune system and activated microglia and astrocytes, which can release chemokines, growth factors, nitric oxide, and nucleotides able to directly influence the neuronal electric activity, has been demonstrated. These complex mechanisms could partly explain the transition from the acute to the chronic phase of neuropathic pain and its maintenance over time. The ability of nerves to achieve a complete regeneration after injury can also influence persistence and intensity of neuropathic pain. Further important clues have come from studies demonstrating that neuropathic pain can be modulated by genetic background and that potential endogenous regulators of pain sensitivity and chronicity might be modulated by new drugs. These findings suggest that new strategies, with potential disease-modifying activity, might be available to treat chronic neuropathic pain in the near future
Recent developments in the management of peripheral neuropathy using skin biopsy = La biopsie cutanée : les progrès d’un outil diagnostique des neuropathies périphériques
No full textSkin biopsy has become a widely used tool to investigate small calibre nerve fibres in peripheral neuropathies. This technique is safe, minimally invasive, painless, easy to perform, and cheap. It provides diagnostic information in patients with small fibre neuropathy in whom routine neurophysiological tests are commonly normal. Moreover, it allows investigating the innervation of sweat glands, thus giving information on the autonomic nervous system. Biopsy of the hairy skin is used to investigate unmyelinated and small myelinated fibres, whereas biopsy of the glabrous skin can be taken to examine large myelinated fibres. The applications of skin biopsy for diagnostic and research purposes cover the spectrum of peripheral nervous system diseases, from painful axonal neuropathies to sensory neuronopathies and immune-mediated and inherited demyelinated neuropathies. Finally, studies on axon regeneration in human and experimental models suggest that skin biopsy has a potential usefulness to monitor the progression of neuropathy and the efficacy of neuroprotective treatments.La biopsie cutanée est largement utilisée pour dépister les neuropathies périphériques à petites fibres. Cette technique peu invasive et indolore est facile à réaliser et peu coûteuse. Elle permet le diagnostic chez les patients présentant une neuropathie à petites fibres où les résultats obtenus par l’ENMG peuvent être normaux. Par ailleurs, elle permet l’étude de l’innervation des glandes sudoripares et fournit ainsi des informations sur le système nerveux autonome. La biopsie cutanée en zone pileuse permet l’étude des fibres amyéliniques et des petites fibres myélinisées, tandis que la biopsie en zone glabre renseigne sur les grandes fibres myélinisées. Les applications cliniques et celles de recherche sont nombreuses pour l’ensemble des neuropathies périphériques, allant des neuropathies axonales douloureuses aux neuronopathies sensitives et aux neuropathies démyélinisantes dysimmunitaires et héréditaires. Enfin, l’étude de la régénération axonale chez l’homme et chez l’animal suggère que la biopsie cutanée peut contribuer au suivi de l’évolution des neuropathies et de l’efficacité des traitements neuroprotecteurs
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