Chapter 26 - American Ibsens

Summary

This chapter surveys the afterlives of Ibsen in varying US cultural settings since the late nineteenth century. It tracks theatrical uses and critical views of Ibsen, from polarized early reactions through various feminist and reformist projects to the canonization of Ibsen as a received classic of modern drama. In surveying a number of central features in the American reception of Ibsen, the chapter explains how successive generations of Americans have perceived Ibsen's relevance to their own sociopolitical moments, and argues that there have always been important supplements and alternatives to the core view of Ibsen as a dramatist of social realism.