Synesthetic Landscapes in Harold Pinter’s Theatre: A Symbolist Legacy

In the light of recent interdisciplinary critical approaches to landscape and space, and adopting phenomenological methods of sensory analysis, this dissertation explores interconnected or synesthetic sensory scapes in contemporary British playwright Harold Pinter\u27s theatre. By studying its dramatic landscapes and probing into their multi-sensory manifestations in line with Symbolist theory and aesthetics, I argue that Pinter\u27s theatre articulates an ecocritical stance and a micropolitical critique. Chapter One explains the dissertation\u27s theoretical framework (landscape theory, Symbolist theory, ecocriticism, phenomenology, and sensory analysis), while arguing for an ecophilosophical reading of Pinter\u27s landscapes that engages not only with spatial patterns but also with the bodyscapes and psychic ecology of his characters. Chapter Two examines the theoretical/aesthetic Symbolist qualities of Pinter\u27s dramaturgy. Chapter Three connects Pinter\u27s sensory scapes to the theories of space and time developed by Henri Bergson, revealing how they are concerned with subjective time as it is lived, with the spatiotemporal circularity of past, present, and future (related to the ouroboros symbol), and with the way one can imaginatively re/create one\u27s own self through life. Chapter Four discusses how Pinter\u27s apocalyptic landscapes evoke the horror of the Holocaust, and denounce the tradition of oppression (or the structures of uncontrolled violence) that repeatedly produces new social and ecological catastrophes. Chapter Five draws upon feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray\u27s concepts of sexual difference to demonstrate the negative ecological effects of a monological patriarchal system of moral values upon family and conjugal life, as expressed in Pinter\u27s oppressive and abusive homescapes. Throughout this study I activate an interdisciplinary dialogue between Pinter\u27s landscapes and those found in works by Symbolist (and Decadent) artists/thinkers (Mallarmé, Rilke, Briusov, Maeterlinck, Rachilde, Patricio, Yeats, Munch, Sacher-Masoch, and Kafka.). Adopting phenomenological views of subjectivity (suggested by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gaston Bachelard, and Stanton Garner, among others), I invoke Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari\u27s notion of micropolitics, as well as the latter\u27s concept of a combined ecology--mental, social, and environmental--to discuss how a study of sensory scapes reveals the presence of ecophilosophical and political concerns all through Pinter\u27s dramatic oeuvre