Drama from Ibsen to Brecht

by Raymond Williams

Book by Williams, Raymond

Genres: Nonfiction, Drama, Plays

424 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Raymond Henry Williams was a Welsh academic, novelist, and critic. He taught for many years and the Professor of Drama at the University of Cambridge. He was an influential figure within the New Left and in wider culture. His writings on politics, culture, the mass media and literature are a significant contribution to the Marxist critique of culture and the arts. His work laid the foundations for the field of cultural studies and the cultural materialist approach. Among his many books are Culture and Society, Culture and Materialism, Politics and Letters, Problems in Materialism and Culture, and several novels.

Reviews

[T. Tokunaga · Rating 1 out of 5]

【An OMG type of popular culture academia / Raymond Williams / Drama from Ibsen to Brecht】

Oh yes, Raymond Williams was a leading scholar of cultural studies? Then why did he only wrote on those artists without referring to excellent craftsmen? This book doesn't even have a chapter for Oscar Wilde? OMG.

Yes, it was written before most important theories which I read now. However, it's shocking how he lacks the basic modesty in writing on plays which are to be studied more. I couldn't understand what he was saying about Henrik Ibsen. Because I can't really understand why he could swallow popular academia discourse like "What was it that made A Doll's House, as drama, appear so strikingly original?" (P45). Wait, it wasn't even "strikingly" original? I think that it's evident that, before the rise of mass communication, "strikingly" original thing was not expected to appear (even if they did), because the audience simply did not need freshness all the time. And the thing is, the original thing, namely Nora's declaration, was milder version of Medea.

Worse said about An Enemy of the People, one of my favorite plays of all time. "an interesting plot, and a high strain of emotion." Oh... it's even possible that he hadn't read Gogol's The Inspector General, exactly on the same theme, corruption of local government and people's governability.

Oh yeah, the Ibsen section ended...61 pages long...?

But here we see another Ibsen popular myth. Ibsen being similar to Chekhov. Partly, like The Seagull and Little Eyolf? But again, it's not The Wild Duck, considering The Wild Duck's main motif is copying, while The Seagull was "creating." The only excuse for this poor understanding would be that he read Ibsen in that rather classical Norwegian language at which he was still intermediate.

My expectations for cultural studies was high thanks to Hoggart introducing me to the rich world of British working class culture. Now it's again dropped under the water. Oh yeah. I dropped out after 120 pages or so.

[Bob Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

The time period is 1850-1950. The author is a wonderful stylist, in the way Eliot was in The Sacred Wood. The chapter on Shaw is very funny in places, and reminds me why I don't like that playwright.

[Larry Schwartz]

Ex-library copy.