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.

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

George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd.

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

Rain stops play

W.H.Allen

Boxing with Shadows is a beautifully crafted account of the two and half years Brian Johnson spent living and travelling in the People's Republic of China. He recreates his encounters with contemporary China and the Chinese with perceptiveness, subtlety and powers of evocation. At the same time he reveals the growing sense of loneliness and vulnerability he experienced, and his frustration at the mutual bafflement of his social exchanges with people of such a differing culture and language. Boxing with Shadows is unique in its treatment of ethnic minority groups in China, and in giving a perspective on Chinese politics and society after the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.

Boxing With Shadows: Travels in China

Travel

Asia

Melbourne Univ Pr

It's Been A Piece Of Cake

RANDOM HOUSE UK

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Books by Johnston, Brian