Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University

Pinter has said that his main concern when writing a play is with structure, yet published criticism has so far paid little attention to this aspect of his craft. This study, therefore, examines the structures of Pinter's stage plays. The method followed is a chronological structural analysis moving from The Room through The Birthday Party, The Dumb Waiter, The Caretaker, The Homecoming, Landscape and Silence to his latest play, Old Times, first produced in London on June 1, 1971- The opening chapter discusses the terms which form a background to the subsequent description of the dramatic structures. The analyses demonstrate that there are at least three major features of his craftsmanship to emerge at this point in his career. The first is that where as the stage plays up to the writing of Landscape share a common, almost traditionally sequential narrative structure, the three latest plays, Landscape, Silence and Old Times, have differently shaped structures relying heavily on the exploration of memory and abandoning a normal sequential ordering of incident. This marked change implies a different use of time which is the second major feature, and is a consequence of the exploration of the past. It is accompanied in Landscape and Silence by a shift from dialogue in the previous plays to an almost exclusive reliance on monologue. Pinter also moves from his earlier comic-grotesque manner to a cooler, more subdued mode which uses lyrical and elegiac language. The third major feature of his craftsmanship is a certain rhythm of structure. This is a tendency to elaborate a one-act form into a larger structure, and then to take some feature or concern from previous work, paring down and compressing to make another one-act play, before building up and elaborating once more. Thus The Room is followed by the larger, three act structure of The Birthday Party to accommodate additional concerns. The Dumb Waiter shows the paring down process before the structural expansion in The Caretaker. The Homecoming, with its tighter two-act structure, is centrally placed, looking back to previously explored themes and anticipating the concern with memory in the three latest works. In the one-act Landscape Pinter abandons horizontal for vertical structure, explores cyclic rather than sequential time and uses monologue rather than dialogue. Silence illustrates a further paring down process in its even more austere denial of theatricality before the renewed building up process discernible in the two-act play, Old Times. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2006. / Title from title screen (site viewed Dec. 13, 2006). PDF text: v, 80 p. : music ; 6.66Mb.. UMI publication number: AAT 3215148. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in microfilm and microfiche formats.

The Voronezh poetry of Osip Mandelstam (1935-1937) is viewed by many critics as one of the most heroic of Russian literature's many confrontations between the poet and the tyrant. Recently, however, Mandelstam's image has seemed to be compromised by the existence of poems revealing a more loyalist Mandelstam, in particular an Ode written in January 1937 in praise of Stalin. Critics are divided as to whether this poem is an expression of genuine praise and loyalty, whether it was written out of pragmatic considerations, or whether it is in fact an attack, in Aesopian language, on Stalin. This thesis argues that the lack of critical concensus on this and other matters is caused in large part by certain dangers inherent in the main method (intertextual analysis) used to study Mandelstam. The thesis therefore has a dual focus: it investigates theories of intertextuality and influence as issues of central importance to current literary debates, and attempts to establish an eclectic theory which fuses elements of various approaches to intertextuality and influence; but it does so in order that the poetry of Mandelstam and other Russian poets may be better understood. The thesis provides a detailed examination of Harold Bloom's theory of influence and applies it to Mandelstam's poetry, and argues that it is possible that it may be applied fruitfully to other Russian poets. Yet Russian poetry also provides a corrective to Bloom's tendency to see poetic influence as almost exclusively a relationship between literary texts. The thesis argues that Mandelstam's poetic precursor is Pushkin, and that his sense of being Pushkin' & heir seems to place him under some sort of obligation to imitate Pushkin's life and death as well as his art an extreme case of zhlznetvorchestvo ("life-creation"). Mandelstam's most significant description of his own death as an imitation of Pushkin's is found in his "Stikhi o neizvestnom soldate" ("Verses on the Unknown Soldier"). Bloom's theory helps one realise that the "Ode to Stalin" is only a part of Mandelstam's rewriting of Pushkin's own uncertainties in his relationship with Nicholas I; one may view the "Ode to Stalin" and "Stikhi o neizvestom soldate" as a single text equivalent to Pushkin's examination in Mednyl vsadnik (The Bronze Horseman) of the conflicting claims of state and individual. Mandelstam's willingness to give the devil some of his best words is thus not incompatible with the anti-Stalin conclusions reached by his work taken as a whole.

No description available.

Note:

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

No description available.

No description available.