The Late Harold Pinter: Political Dramatist, Poet and Activist [Hardcover]

This volume is the first to provide a book-length study of Pinters overtly political activity. With chapters on political drama, poetry, and speeches, it charts a consistent tension between aesthetics and politics through Pinters later career and defines the politics of the work in terms of a pronounced sensory dimension and capacity to affect audiences. The book brings to light unpublished letters and drafts from the Pinter Archive in the British Library and draws his political poems and speeches, which have previously been overshadowed by his plays, into the foreground. Intended for students, instructors, and researchers in drama and theatre, performance studies, literature, and media studies, this book celebrates Pinters later life and work by discerning a coherent political voice and project and by registering the complex ways that project troubles the divide between aesthetics and politics.Harold Pinter (1930-2008) is one of the foremost twentieth-century dramatists/ playwrights in Britain as well as the world. This new book offers a comprehensive overview of Pinter's work across various media including political dramas, poetry, screenplays, and his activism.

This book was very well written, and Chiasson went above and beyond to explain to readers how Pinters later works used both affect and aesthetics to convey their messages. & this book would be important to anyone who wants to study politics, poetics, rhetoric, and the media. This could be a particularly good book for a class that is studying media and politics. (Katy Johnson, CBQ Communication Booknotes Quarterly, Vol. lS"