Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> I began to write this book because I was struck by the discrepancy between Ibsen’s unquestioned status as a classic of the stage and the relative absence of interest in his work among academic critics. Equally striking were the inces- sant references to Baudelaire Flaubert and Manet as the great founders of modernism. Why I wondered was Ibsen’s name not included? Why would intellectuals and critics ritually refer to modernism in relation to poetry narrative prose and painting but not theater? Was it because of Ibsen? Or because of something to do with theater as an art form? Whatever the reasons I soon noticed that in Anglophone academic circles the bare men- tion of Ibsen’s name tended to elicit responses marked by boredom disdain or condescension. I cannot count the number of times otherwise well-read people have told me that they have never read and never bothered to see any plays by Ibsen or that they haven’t read any since they were students. They do not seem to mind telling me this. In the Anglophone world it is still shameful for a literary critic to reveal that he or she knows nothing about Baudelaire and Flaubert. Why then are so many critics convinced that ignorance of Ibsen is just fine? Although one or two of Ibsen’s plays remain required reading in introduc- tory courses on modern theater they are there mostly as obligatory historical markers hurdles to be got over as soon as possible so as to get to the really exciting stuff whether that is taken to begin with Chekhov Artaud and Brecht or Beckett. This attitude reveals Ibsen’s ambiguous status: on the one hand he represents the unquestioned beginning of modernism in the theater. (SP)