Ibsen's Houses
Architectural Metaphor and the Modern Uncanny

Mark B. Sandberg analyzes reception materials to explore the architectural metaphors that Ibsen's plays introduced into mainstream Western thought.

Mark B. Sandberg (Author)

9781107033924, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 16 March 2015

236 pages, 16 b/w illus.
23.5 x 16 x 1.5 cm, 0.51 kg

Henrik Ibsen's plays came at a pivotal moment in late nineteenth-century European modernity. They engaged his public through a strategic use of metaphors of house and home, which resonated with experiences of displacement, philosophical homelessness, and exile. The most famous of these metaphors - embodied by the titles of his plays A Doll's House, Pillars of Society, and The Master Builder - have entered into mainstream Western thought in ways that mask the full force of the reversals Ibsen performed on notions of architectural space. Analyzing literary and performance-related reception materials from Ibsen's lifetime, Mark B. Sandberg concentrates on the interior dramas of the playwright's prose-play cycle, drawing also on his selected poems. Sandberg's close readings of texts and cultural commentary present the immediate context of the plays, provide new perspectives on them for international readers, and reveal how Ibsen became a master of the modern uncanny.

Introduction
1. Ibsen's uncanny
2. Facades unmasked
3. Home and house
4. The tenacity of architecture
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: plays & playwrights [DSG], Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF], Theatre direction & production [ANF]