Word: ibsenism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...APRIL 1900 the eighteen-year-old James Jovce wrote a worshipful review of Henrik Ibsen's last drama, When We Dead Awaken. He ranked the play with the greatest of the author's work and called the author himself "one of the world's great men before whom criticism can make but feeble show." Ibsen, reading the review, wrote to thank the young Dubliner with words which, Joyce vowed. "I shall keep in my heart all my life...
What makes Ibsen of primary importance for twentieth century literature--what Joyce called "his lofty, impersonal power"--is driven to its furthest conclusion in When We Dead Awaken. Subtitled "A Dramatic Epilogue" because it concludes a long series of socially critical dramas beginning with A Doll's House, the play also marks the epilogue to Ibsen's development as an artist. From the intense portrayal of the failures of bourgeois society, Ibsen's discontent has flooded over into a despairing view of art itself and of the artist as a man who has not lived...
When We Dead Awaken by Henrik Ibsen. Loeb Ex. 7:30. April 13 through 15. Free...
Nearly a century has gone by since Ibsen's A Doll's House, and Nora's challenge has not been met in the theater. Ibsen himself could have written a sequel that began with Nora slamming the door and journeying forth to mold her destiny. Ibsen never wrote that play, and no modern playwright has made a serious attempt at it. Instead, women have been perceived as types-almost anything but the full human being Nora craved to become. Women characters fare no better at the hands of female playwrights, and even authors who respect women have...
...Ibsen's ardent disciple, Shaw, saw women as serene, witty goddesses of reason, but he usually defined them solely by their relationships to men. Candida's final choice is to stay with the bumbling preacher husband who needs her rather than flee with the fiery bohemian poet who can fend for himself. There are exceptions. St. Joan wins martyrdom, and Major Barbara wins control of a munitions empire, both rather atypical social pursuits. And that tells us something. Drama is a reflexive, not an innovative art form, and a playwright can rarely advance much beyond the boundaries that...