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Henrik Ibsen

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great Norwegian playwright whose middle-class tragedies include A Doll's House, The Wild Duck, Hedda Gabler and An Enemy of the People.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great Norwegian playwright and poet, best known for his middle class tragedies such as The Wild Duck, Hedda Gabler, A Doll's House and An Enemy of the People. These are set in a world where the middle class is dominant and explore the qualities of that life, its weaknesses and boundaries and the ways in which it takes away freedoms. It is the women who fare the worst in this society, something Ibsen explored in A Doll's House among others, a play that created a sensation with audiences shocked to watch a woman break free of her bourgeois family life to find her destiny. He explored dark secrets such as incest and, in Ghosts, hereditary syphilis, which attracted the censors. He gave actresses parts they had rarely had before, and audiences plays that, after Shakespeare, became the most performed in the world.

With

Tore Rem
Professor of English Literature at the University of Oslo

Kirsten Shepherd-Barr
Professor of English and Theatre Studies and Tutorial Fellow, St Catherine's College at the University of Oxford

And

Dinah Birch
Professor of English Literature and Pro-Vice Chancellor for Cultural Engagement at the University of Liverpool

Producer: Simon Tillotson.

Available now

50 minutes

Last on

Thu 31 May 2018 21:30
Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4

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LINKS AND FURTHER READING

Μύ

READING LIST:

Gunilla Anderman, Europe on Stage (Oberon, 2005)

Paul Binding, With Vine-Leaves in His Hair (Norvik P., 2006)

Errol Durbach (ed.), Ibsen and the Theatre (Palgrave Macmillan, 1980)

Michael Egan (ed.), Henrik Ibsen: The Critical Heritage (Routledge, 1997)

Narve Fulsas and Tore Rem, Ibsen, Scandinavia and the Making of a World Drama (Cambridge University Press, 2017)

Julie Holledge et al., A Global Doll’s House (Palgrave, 2016)

Henrik Ibsen (ed. Tore Rem, trans. by Geoffrey Hill), Peer Gynt and Brand, (Penguin, 2017)

Henrik Ibsen (ed. Tore Rem, trans. Deborah Dawkin and Erik Skuggevik), A Doll’s House and Other Plays (Penguin, 2016)

Henrik Ibsen (ed. Tore Rem, trans. by Barbara J. Haveland and Anne-Marie Stanton-Ife), The Master Builder and Other Plays (Penguin, 2014)

Sally Ledger, Henrik Ibsen (Northcote House, 2008)

Charles R. Lyons (ed.), Critical Essays on Henrik Ibsen (G.K. Hall, 1987)

James McFarlane (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ibsen (Cambridge University Press, 1994)

Frederick J. Marker and Lise-Lone Marker, Ibsen’s Lively Art:Μύ A Performance Study of the Major Plays (Cambridge University Press, 1989)

Michael Meyer, Henrik Ibsen (Cardinal, 1992)

Toril Moi, Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism (Oxford University Press, 2006)

Franco Moretti, The Bourgeois (Verso, 2013)

Mark Sandberg, Ibsen’s Houses (Cambridge University Press, 2015)

Kirsten Shepherd-Barr, Ibsen and Early Modernist Theatre, 1890-1900 (Greenwood P., 1997)

Kirsten Shepherd-Barr, Modern Drama: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2016)

Kirsten Shepherd-Barr, Theatre and Evolution from Ibsen to Beckett (Columbia University Press, 2015)

Ross Shideler, Questioning the Father: From Darwin to Zola, Ibsen, Strindberg, and Hardy (Stanford University Press, 2000)

Evert Sprinchorn (ed. and trans.), Ibsen: Letters and Speeches (Hill and Wang, 1964)

Joan Templeton, Ibsen’s Women (Cambridge University Press, 1997)

Raymond Williams, Drama from Ibsen to Brecht (Penguin, 1974)

Credits

Presenter Melvyn Bragg
Interviewed Guest Tore Rem
Interviewed Guest Kirsten Shepherd-Barr
Interviewed Guest Dinah Birch
Producer Simon Tillotson

Broadcasts

  • Thu 31 May 2018 09:00
    Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4
  • Thu 31 May 2018 21:30
    Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4

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