Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism: Art, Theater, Philosophy

by Toril Moi

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 boring 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 also for his modernism.

Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism situates Ibsen in his cultural context, emphasizes his position as a Norwegian in European culture, and shows how important painting and other visual arts were for his aesthetic education. The book rewrites literary history, reminding modern readers that
idealism was the dominant aesthetic paradigm of the nineteenth century. Modernism was born in the ruins of idealism, Moi argues, thus challenging traditional theories of the opposition between realism and modernism.

By reading Ibsen's modernist plays as investigations of the fate of love in an age of skepticism, Moi shows why Ibsen still matters to us. In this book, Ibsen's plays are showed to be profoundly concerned by theater and theatricality, both on stage and in everyday life. Ibsen's unsettling
explorations of women, men and marriage here emerge as chronicles of the tension between skepticism and the everyday, and between critique and utopia in modernity.

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

Genres: Plays, Philosophy

416 pages, Hardcover

First published August 3, 2006

About the author

Toril Moi is James B. Duke Professor of Literature and Romance Studies and Professor of English, Philosophy and Theatre Studies at Duke University. Moi is also the Director of the Center for Philosophy, Arts, and Literature at Duke. She attended University of Bergen. Previously she held positions as a lecturer in French at the University of Oxford and as Director of the Center for Feminist Research at the University of Bergen, Norway. She lived in Oxford, United Kingdom from 1979 to 1989. Currently she lives in North Carolina. She works on feminist theory and women's writing; on the intersections of literature, philosophy and aesthetics; on "finding ways of reading literature with philosophy and philosophy with literature without reducing the one to the other."

In 2002 she was awarded an honorary degree, doctor philos. honoris causa, at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.[1] In 1998 she won Duke's University Teacher of the Year Award and in 2008 she won the Dean's Award for Excellence in Mentoring of Graduate Students.

She is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

Reviews

[hing · Rating 5 out of 5]

i love toril moi so much god inject her research and theory directly into my bloodstream

[Cecily Gubser · Rating 5 out of 5]

just so good. made me wonder why I ever bothered to read any other Ibsen criticism.

[Michael Meeuwis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just staggering, I thought: a definitive account of Ibsen's plays, an entree into an entire world of nineteenth-century Norwegian intellectual history, and a fascinating discussion of some aspects of theater and theatricality in general. (Who knew Ibsen was profoundly influenced by Victorian narrative art?) I can't recommend this highly enough, either for the study of other theater or for assigning (in parts) to students reading Ibsen. What higher praise can one offer than "this book made me want to read minor Ibsen"?

[Kathleen McKim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found Chapter 7, which discusses "A Doll's House" very helpful to my overall understanding of the impact the play would have had on its contemporary viewer. Moi's discussion of Nora as the human being versus doll (automaton) is going to be very helpful when unpacking this play with my AP Lit students.

[Elsie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good book. Too bad I'm allergic to her class.