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

...an illuminating rer-valuation of the influence of aesthetic idealism, a welcome discussion about the need to take back real language in literary criticism, a veritable handbook of imaginative approaches to take to the culture clash of the nineteenth century, a sometimes fruitful, often frustrating, even troubling read for those who have been engaged with Ibsen for a long time... (Mary Kay Norseng MLR)

The best literary criticism makes us see authors and literary works in a new light and inspires us with a desire to reread them. This is the critical alchemy that Toril Moi achieves with her accessibly written yet genuinely scholarly book Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism. A sustained study of a single major author, the book also has global sweep and interdisciplinary breadth. Moi situates Ibsen and Norway within the European republic of letters, overturns the conventional reading of Ibsen as a realist predecessor of modern theater, and produces a compelling answer to the perennial question, "What is modernism?" By reframing Ibsen as a modernist, Moi gives fresh meaning to Ibsens work across disciplines and to his influential engagement with modern visual culture. (MLA Prize Committee)

A magisterial book. (Martin Puchner, London Review of Books)

Moi has written a subtle and brilliant analysis of the plays - both poetic and realist - but she has done much more than that. She has redrawn the parameters of the distinction between realist and 'modern', in a surprising and exciting way....There are all sorts of good things in this book....It alters our idea both of Ibsen and of the world of ideas he worked in. (AS Byatt, Guardian)

This is an indispensable book, as illuminating of the painting and literature of the times as of Ibsen himself. (Paul Binding, Spectator)

A subtle and brilliant analysis... surprising and exciting.... It alters both our idea of Ibsen and of the world of ideas he worked in. (A. S. Byatt, Guardian Review Mook of the Week)

Moi is full of rare insights into the arts, philosophy and culture of the nineteenth century. (Alastair Macaulay, Financial Times)

Moi provides a blend of theory, history, and interpretation that simultaneously renders Ibsen's aesthetic development coherent and situates the great Norwegian playwright in the orbit of Baudelaire, Flaubert, and Manet as a revolutionary pioneer of European modernism. Summing Up: Highly recommended. (Choice)

The best account of Ibsen's mind and stagecraaft I have read, but it does a lot more than that. (A.S.Byatt, Times Literary Supplement.)

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.