Ibsen, Theatre, and the Ideology of Modernism

Extract

Over the past generation, literary critics and theatre scholars in the United States have not been overly interested in Ibsen, widely considered a fuddy-duddy old realist who never truly became modern. The fact that his plays are still performed all over the world has had little effect on scholarly opinion. This is a deplorable state of affairs, for Ibsen is a major writer of modernity on a par with Baudelaire, and Flaubert. He is also unique among nineteenth-century writers for his clear-eyed and profound analysis of the relationships between women and men in modernity.