Harold Pinter’s “The Homecoming” (1965) has garnered critical acclaim ever since it was published and performed on stage. The centering of a sexually desirable woman in a plot dominated by men unravels a power play that resists and subverts language, expression and action.
The seminar offers an opportunity to analyse the play through close reading and engage with emergent ideas of (un)structured reality, fragmentation and unreliability. One of the aims is to also trace the influences of existential angst and postwar disillusionment found in Samuel Beckett’s plays like “Waiting for Godot” and “Endgame”. Reading drama as a raw manifestation of the human condition and locating it in its historical, philosophical and cultural contexts will frame our understanding of modernism and postmodernism. With that in mind, the poetics of postmodern drama will be explored and Pinter’s relationship to the Theatre of the Absurd will be of key interest to the discussion. One session will be devoted to the theoretical background of the seminar and another will be reserved for one film adaptation.
Please make sure you have a physical copy of “the Homecoming”. You will be able to order it online (on World of Books website). Other reading materials will be available on Moodle.
- verantwortliche Lehrperson: Chandni Rampersad