Mythic Patterns in Ibsen's Last Plays

Mythic Patterns in Ibsen's Last Plays PDF Author: Orley I. Holtan
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452910944
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Illuminates the modern relevance of the symbolism contained in the Norwegian dramatist's last eight works

Mythic Patterns in Ibsen's Last Plays

Mythic Patterns in Ibsen's Last Plays PDF Author: Orley I. Holtan
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 0816657890
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Mythic Patterns in Ibsen's Last Plays was first published in 1970. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. Until recently critics have tended to regard Ibsen principally as a social dramatist, one who was concerned primarily with the political, social, and moral questions of his time. Radical though he was in the Victorian era, his ideas, with the passage o time, ceased to be avant garde,and for this reason many critics have dismissed him as outdated. Professor Holtan examines a major portion of Ibsen's work, his last eight plays, in a new perspective, however, and finds much that is of lasting significance and interest. Ibsen's initial impact came with the publication in 1879 of A Doll's House,the play which seemingly advocates a woman's right to leave her husband and children. His reputation as a social dramatist was only furthered by the appearance of his next two plays, Ghosts and An Enemy of the People. But Professor Holtan's study of the plays which came after these identifies in the later plays values which transcend the social problems of their time, penetrating questions of the human spirit itself. The eight last plays which Professor Holtan examines in this study are The Wild Duck, Rosmersholm, The Lady from the Sea, Hedda Gabler, The Master Builder, Little Eyolf, John Gabriel Borkman, and When We Dead Awaken. In these plays he identifies a mythic pattern and unity based in elements of symbolism and mysticism which have puzzled or annoyed readers and critics for years. In his mythic vision Ibsen's lasting contribution far exceeds that of his invention of the social-problem drama, Professor Holtan concludes.

Ibsen and the Greeks

Ibsen and the Greeks PDF Author: Norman Rhodes
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
ISBN: 9780838752982
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
"Was Ibsen influenced by Greek culture? Were allusions to the Greeks configured in the Norwegian playwright's works? According to author Norman Rhodes, whether consciously or unconsciously, many of Ibsen's plays are encoded with veiled references to ancient Greek culture. Rhodes also postulates that Ibsen's perception of the importance of the Greeks was most likely mediated to him through German Romanticism and Scandinavian culture." "According to Rhodes, numerous echoes of Greek literature resonate in such early Ibsen plays as Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljerkrans, and Love's Comedy. Ibsen's Brand and Peer Gynt are a dialectic pair which in key ways are suggestive of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, A Doll House has important parallels with Sophocles' Antigone, and An Enemy of the People correlates with both Plato's Apology and Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannos. Moreover, a Euripidean sense of fatal irrationality seems inscribed in Ibsen's final plays: the protagonists John Rosmer, Hedda Gabler, Master Builder Solness, John Gabriel Borkman, and the sculptor Rubek all destroy themselves."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Ibsen's Drama

Ibsen's Drama PDF Author: Einar Ingvald Haugen
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452910316
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description


Ibsen's Theatre of Ritualistic Visions

Ibsen's Theatre of Ritualistic Visions PDF Author: Trausti Ólafsson
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9783039111343
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
This book examines the ritualistic and mythological features derived from various religious traditions depicted in ten Ibsen plays. The worshipping of the Great Mother, the Mysteries of Eleusis, the Hebrew Passover Meal and Yom Kippur, alongside with the most sacred feasts of Christianity, are identified in Ibsen's texts in a way not discovered before. The outcome is a fascinating voyage through a landscape of ritualistic visions. Throughout the book the author illustrates how the plays contribute to the revival of the sacred in modernist theatre. Each chapter of the book contains a synopsis of the play interpreted, followed by a detailed analysis, which focuses on religious concepts and mythological elements incorporated in Ibsen's texts.

Modernism in European Drama

Modernism in European Drama PDF Author: Frederick J. Marker
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 9780802082060
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
This collection of essays, originally published over the last forty years in the journal Modern Drama, explores the drama of four of the most influential European proponents of modernism in the European Drama: Ibsen, Strandberg, Pirandello and Beckett.

‘Ibsen the Romantic’

‘Ibsen the Romantic’ PDF Author: Errol Durbach
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349053007
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description


Ibsen's Women

Ibsen's Women PDF Author: Joan Templeton
Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
The first comprehensive study of the women in Ibsen’s life and work, this landmark book provides a close reading of actual and fictional women as it re-examines the biographical and critical record. In clear, much praised writing, Templeton traces patterns of gender throughout Ibsen’s plays, from the portrayals of women in the little known early dramas to the famous protagonists of A Doll House, Ghosts, Hedda Gabler, and the women of the “last quartet.” Templeton offers a reappraisal of the debated question of Ibsen’s relation to feminism, arguing against a false and demeaning critical tradition, and provides important new information on the young women of Ibsen’s later years and their presence in his plays. The book has been praised as incisive, masterful, provocative, and — a rarity among scholarly books — accessible to the general reader. “Joan Templeton’s Ibsen’s Women is a book to contend with. Templeton is a major Ibsen scholar who has written a tonic evaluation of what a major dramatist actually wrought. A delight to read.” — Arnold Weinstein, Scandinavian Studies “Ibsen’s Women marks a paradigm shift in Ibsen scholarship, moving ‘the woman question’ from the marginal category of ‘an aspect of’ to the core of the dramatic oeuvre. This is dazzling close reading, sophisticated, rigorous, artful. Templeton’s command of her material is masterly.” — Mary Kay Norseng, Ibsen News and Comment “Why is A Doll House not dated? This is one of the questions Joan Templeton answers in this very important book. Her style is witty and graceful and blessedly free of jargon. Her text is aimed at a wide variety of readers.” — Barry Jacobs, The Boston Review of Books “A goldmine of information... The scope and wide-ranging coverage of this book make it indispensable for anybody wishing to teach or write about Ibsen.” — Toril Moi,Ibsen Studies “Rich and rewarding. The close textual analysis supports Templeton’s thesis that Ibsen’s plays and his women characters are quintessentially feminist. A strong argument for the connection between Ibsen’s women and Ibsen’s modernism. Recommended for all collections.” — Choice

An Enemy of the People ; The Wild Duck ; Rosmersholm

An Enemy of the People ; The Wild Duck ; Rosmersholm PDF Author: Henrik Ibsen
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780192839435
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
The three plays in this volume all deal with the moral courage needed to tell the truth. They are peopled by complex individuals pitted against, or part, of a society that Ibsen felt was morally abhorrent.

An Idea of the Drama

An Idea of the Drama PDF Author: Bert Cardullo
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9783631613795
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
"This is a collection of ten long essays arranged around the primordial subject of realism and non-realism, or anti-realism, in the drama, as this subject manifests itself in modern Europe and contemporary America from Ibsen to Shaw to the symbolists, expressionists, surrealists, dadaists, futurists, and absurdists. This book treats not only the issue of realism versus anti-realism in theater from a practical as well as a theoretical point of view. It also treats at least two subjects related to this issue: the superfical or bourgeois realism that has long crippled the theater versus the critical and sometimes poetic realism that liberates it; and the avant-garde, the rearguard, and the middle-to-advanced artistic ground in between claimed by Bertolt Brecht and Harold Pinter. Special attention is paid, moreover, to the first thoroughgoing American avant-garde dramatist, Gertrude Stein. In sum, this book treats the subject of realism and non-realism from the point of view of the theater's ability to create not only the illusion of reality onstage, but also the reality of illusion"--Publisher's description, back cover.

The Death of Character

The Death of Character PDF Author: Elinor Fuchs
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253113474
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
"Extremely well written, and exceedingly well informed, this is a work that opens a variety of important questions in sophisticated and theoretically nuanced ways. It is hard to imagine a better tour guide than Fuchs for a trip through the last thirty years of, as she puts it, what we used to call the 'avant-garde.'" —Essays in Theatre ". . . an insightful set of theoretical 'takes' on how to think about theatre before and theatre after modernism." —Theatre Journal "In short, for those who never experienced a 'postmodern swoon,' Elinor Fuchs is an excellent informant." —Performing Arts Journal ". . . a thoughtful, highly readable contribution to the evolving literature on theatre and postmodernism." —Modern Drama "A work of bold theoretical ambition and exceptional critical intelligence. . . . Fuchs combines mastery of contemporary cultural theory with a long and full participation in American theater culture: the result is a long-needed, long-awaited elaboration of a new theatrical paradigm." —Una Chaudhuri, New York University "What makes this book exceptional is Fuchs' acute rehearsal of the stranger unnerving events of the last generation that have—in the cross-reflections of theory—determined our thinking about theater. She seems to have seen and absorbed them all." —Herbert Blau, Center for Twentieth Century Studies, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee "Surveying the extraordinary scene of the postmodern American theater, Fuchs boldly frames key issues of subjectivity and performance with the keenest of critical eyes for the compelling image and the telling gesture." —Joseph Roach, Tulane University " . . . Fuchs makes an exceptionally lucid and eloquent case for the value and contradictions in postmodern theater." —Alice Rayner, Stanford University "Arguably the most accessible yet learned road map to what remains for many impenetrable territoryan obligatory addition to all academic libraries serving upper-division undertgraduates and above." —Choice "A systematic, comprehensive and historically-minded assessment of what, precisely, 'post-modern theatre' is, anyway." —American Theatre In this engrossing study, Elinor Fuchs explores the multiple worlds of theater after modernism. While The Death of Character engages contemporary cultural and aesthetic theory, Elinor Fuchs always speaks as an active theater critic. Nine of her Village Voice and American Theatre essays conclude the volume. They give an immediate, vivid account of contemporary theater and theatrical culture written from the front of rapid cultural change.