Ibsen's Drama: Right Action and Tragic Joy FROM THE PUBLISHER
Theoharis Theoharis argues that in his late plays Ibsen struggled with, and finally repudiated, the Aristotelian ideas of reality and change that held sway over the earlier part of his career, and more generally, over nineteenth-century drama and culture. Theoharis delves into Aristotle's Poetics to look at the classical relations amongst catharsis, rational agency, and intelligible change in human affairs; considers Nietzsche's transformation of those topics into a modernist poetics and agenda for living; and then turns his attention to Ibsen's plays (specifically Ghosts, Rosmersholm, and the Master Builder), relating Ibsen's formal, intellectual, and cultural innovations to Nietzsche's assault on the Aristotelian humanism that Victorian Europe valued so highly. Theoharis argues that through a Nietzschean subversion of the popular forms of Victorian theater and culture, Ibsen struggled to reveal how life could pass, heroically, from right action to tragic joy.
FROM THE CRITICS
Booknews
This is the paperbound edition of a 1996 work that situates Henrik Ibsen and his plays within the sweep of western culture. The author teaches at Harvard University and is editor of . After study of Aristotle's Poetics and Nietzsche's impact, Theoharis applies his analysis of their themes to close readings of and . Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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