The first major critical study in English of Henrik Ibsen for almost forty years.

Shows why Ibsen`s work was so scandalous in its time, and why he was such an influence on writers such as Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, and James Joyce.
Rediscovers idealism as dominant critical discourse of the nineteenth century, thus providing a new account of the birth of modernism. A Norwegian-speaker, Toril Moi has drawn on a great range of Scandinavian sources not previously considered by English-speaking critics.
Richly illustrated, including a full-colour plate section.


Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) is the founder of modern theater, and his plays are performed all over the world. Yet in spite of his unquestioned status as a classic of the stage, Ibsen is often dismissed as a fuddy-duddy old realist, whose plays are of interest only because they remain the gateway to modern theater. In Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism , Toril Moi makes a powerful case not just for Ibsen`s modernity, but for his modernism. Situating Ibsen in his cultural context, she shows how unexpected his rise to world fame was, and the extent of his influence on writers such Shaw, Wilde, and Joyce who were seeking to escape the shackles of Victorianism.

Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism also rewrites nineteenth-century literary history; positioning Ibsen between visual art and philosophy, the book offers a critique of traditional theories of the opposition between realism and modernism. Modernism, Moi argues, arose from the ruins of idealism, the dominant aesthetic paradigm of the nineteenth century. She also shows why Ibsen still matters to us today, by focusing on two major themes-his explorations of women, men, and marriage and his clear-eyed chronicling of the tension between skepticism and the everyday.

This radical new account places Ibsen in his rightful place alongside Baudelaire, Flaubert, and Manet as a founder of European modernism.

Contents
An Ibsen Chronology
Introduction
Part I: Ibsen`s Place in History

1. Ibsen and the Ideology of Modernism
2. Postcolonial Norway? Ibsen`s Cultural Resources
3. Rethinking Literary History: Idealism, Realism, and the Birth of Modernism
4. Ibsen`s Visual World: Spectacles, Painting, Theater
Part II: Ibsen`s Modern Breakthrough

5. The Idealist Straitjacket: Ibsen`s Early Aesthetics
6. Becoming Modern: Modernity and Theater in Emperor and Galilean
Part III: Ibsen`s Modernism: Love in an Age of Skepticism

7. "First and Foremost a Human Being": Idealism, Theater, and Gender in A Doll`s House
8. Losing Touch with the Everyday: Love and Language in The Wild Duck
9. Losing Faith in Language: Fantasies of Perfect Communication in Rosmersholm
10. The Art of Transformation: Art, Marriage, and Freedom in The Lady From the Sea
Epilogue: Idealism and the "Bad" Everyday
Appendix 1: Synopsis of Emperor and Galilean
Appendix 2: Translating Ibsen