<p>Brian Johnston's approach to Ibsen, now well known, is unlike any other. Johnston sees Ibsen's twelve realist plays as a single cyclical work, the "realist" method of which hides a much larger poetic intention than has previously been suspected. He believes that the cycle constitutes one of the major works of the European imagination, comparable in scale to Goethe or Dante. And he has shown Ibsen to be the heir to Romantic and Hegelian art and thought, adapting this heritage to the circumstances of his own day.This work demonstrates how the language and scene, characters and "props," of the Ibsen dramas establish a bold and far-reaching theatrical goal: nothing less than an account of our biological and cultural identity in its multilayered totality. Johnston argues that Ibsen's realist text, while stimulating the appearance of nineteenth-century life, also objectively and precisely builds up an alternative image in which archetypal figures and situations from our cultural past repossess the realist stage. Thus he sees the Ibsen "strategy" in his realist plays as twofold: (1) the dialectical subversion of the nineteenth-century reality presented in the plays, and (2) the forced recovery of the archetypal from the past, in a procedure similar to James Joyce's in Ulysses. By "supertext" Johnston means a reservoir of cultural reference upon which Ibsen continuously drew in his realist work just as in is earlier poetic and historical dramas.</p>

Text and Supertext in Ibsen’s Drama

Literature & Fiction

Johnston, Brian

Dramas & Plays

Penn State University Press

Ibsen Cycle: The Design of the Plays from Pillars of Society to When We Dead Awaken

Format Paperback Subject European Literature Drama Literary Criticism General Miscellaneous Literary Criticism Theater Writing Publisher University Park Pa Pennsylvania State University Press c1992

Brian Johnston's approach to Ibsen, now well known, is unlike any other. Johnston sees Ibsen's twelve realist plays as a single cyclical work, the "realist" method of which hides a much larger poetic intention than has previously been suspected. He believes that the cycle constitutes one of the major works of the European imagination, comparable in scale to Goethe or Dante. And he has shown Ibsen to be the heir to Romantic and Hegelian art and thought, adapting this heritage to the circumstances of his own day.This work demonstrates how the language and scene, characters and "props," of the Ibsen dramas establish a bold and far-reaching theatrical goal: nothing less than an account of our biological and cultural identity in its multilayered totality. Johnston argues that Ibsen's realist text, while stimulating the appearance of nineteenth-century life, also objectively and precisely builds up an alternative image in which archetypal figures and situations from our cultural past repossess the realist stage. Thus he sees the Ibsen "strategy" in his realist plays as twofold: (1) the dialectical subversion of the nineteenth-century reality presented in the plays, and (2) the forced recovery of the archetypal from the past, in a procedure similar to James Joyce's in Ulysses. By "supertext" Johnston means a reservoir of cultural reference upon which Ibsen continuously drew in his realist work just as in is earlier poetic and historical dramas.

Letters Home

Johnston, Barry (ed.)

Essays & Correspondence

London, United Kingdom: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Limited, 1998

It's Been a Piece of Cake: A Tribute to My Favourite Test Cricketers

Sports & Outdoors

Methuen Publishing, Ltd.

Chatterboxes: My friends the commentators

Methuen, London

Published to celebrate the author's 80th birthday, this book contains a wealth of thoughts and reminiscences, recapping in an A-Z format all the events, people, places and concepts which have influenced Brian Johnston's life over the years.

Someone Who Was: Reflections on a Life of Happiness and Fun

Biographies & Memoirs

<p>Physical description; 117p. Subjects; Humorous prose. English prose.</p>

I Say, I Say, I Say: Johnners' Choice of Jokes to Keep You Laughing

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

METHUEN

Rain stops play

W.H.Allen

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