Henrik Ibsen
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.
Guests
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Tore Rem No other episodes
Professor of English Literature at the University of Oslo -
Kirsten Shepherd-Barr No other episodes
Professor of English and Theatre Studies and Tutorial Fellow, St Catherine's College at the University of Oxford - Dinah Birch
13 episodes
Professor of English Literature and Pro-Vice Chancellor for Cultural Engagement at the University of Liverpool
Reading list
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Europe on Stage
Gunilla Anderman (Oberon, 2005) Google Books → -
With Vine-Leaves in His Hair
Paul Binding (Norvik P., 2006) Google Books → -
Ibsen and the Theatre
Errol Durbach (ed.) (Palgrave Macmillan, 1980) Google Books → -
Henrik Ibsen: The Critical Heritage
Michael Egan (ed.) (Routledge, 1997) Google Books → -
Ibsen, Scandinavia and the Making of a World Drama
Narve Fulsas and Tore Rem (Cambridge University Press, 2017) -
A Global Doll's House
Julie Holledge et al. (Palgrave, 2016) -
Peer Gynt and Brand
Henrik Ibsen (ed. Tore Rem, trans. by Geoffrey Hill) (Penguin, 2017) Google Books → -
A Doll's House and Other Plays
Henrik Ibsen (ed. Tore Rem, trans. Deborah Dawkin and Erik Skuggevik) (Penguin, 2016) Google Books → -
The Master Builder and Other Plays
Henrik Ibsen (ed. Tore Rem, trans. by Barbara J. Haveland and Anne-Marie Stanton-Ife) (Penguin, 2014) Google Books → -
Henrik Ibsen
Sally Ledger (Northcote House, 2008) Google Books → -
Critical Essays on Henrik Ibsen
Charles R. Lyons (ed.) (G.K. Hall, 1987) Google Books → -
The Cambridge Companion to Ibsen
James McFarlane (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 1994) Google Books → -
Ibsen's Lively Art: A Performance Study of the Major Plays
Frederick J. Marker and Lise-Lone Marker (Cambridge University Press, 1989) Google Books → -
Henrik Ibsen
Michael Meyer (Cardinal, 1992) Google Books → -
Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism
Toril Moi (Oxford University Press, 2006) Google Books → -
The Bourgeois
Franco Moretti (Verso, 2013) Google Books → -
Ibsen's Houses
Mark Sandberg (Cambridge University Press, 2015) Google Books → -
Ibsen and Early Modernist Theatre, 1890-1900
Kirsten Shepherd-Barr (Greenwood P., 1997) Google Books → -
Modern Drama: A Very Short Introduction
Kirsten Shepherd-Barr (Oxford University Press, 2016) Google Books → -
Theatre and Evolution from Ibsen to Beckett
Kirsten Shepherd-Barr (Columbia University Press, 2015) Google Books → -
Questioning the Father: From Darwin to Zola, Ibsen, Strindberg, and Hardy
Ross Shideler (Stanford University Press, 2000) Google Books → -
Ibsen: Letters and Speeches
Evert Sprinchorn (ed. and trans.) (Hill and Wang, 1964) -
Ibsen's Women
Joan Templeton (Cambridge University Press, 1997) Google Books → -
Drama from Ibsen to Brecht
Raymond Williams (Penguin, 1974) Google Books →
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Programme ID: b0b42q58
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b42q58
Auto-category: 839.822 (Norwegian drama)