Scandinavian Literature

Cherished Disappointments in Love is a brilliantly funny and wildly savage theatrical roller-coaster ride. A woman of a certain age is in love with Finland's youngest philosopher, Pekka Himanen. He is also loved by an army sergeant major who means to make a man of him. From the country who gave us saunas, Nokia and Mika Hakkinen, Cherished Disappointments in Love is a comic fantasia on love, philosophy and theatre. Shot through with an eroticism that engenders chaos, the time-honoured and eternal differences between male and female are played out upon the stage with wild, highly comic intensity.

The plays in this volume reflect the uncertainty accompanying social transformations in the new millennium. They have all been very popular with Finnish and international audiences. The plays explore universal themes such as crises in identity, love relationships, problems of unemployment, dysfunctional families, alcohol abuse, and the questioning of moral and spiritual values. They have been chosen for this anthology on the basis of their international appeal as much as their aesthetic and dramatic quality. Includes: Border Crossing by Kari Hotakainen, Mobile Horror by Juja Jokela, Panic by Mika Myllyaho, Can You Here The Howling by Reko Lundan, and QUeen C by Laura Ruohonen.

Kai Laitinen -- The superintendent / Paavo Haavikko -- Eva Maria / V.V. Järner -- Snow in May / Eeva-Liisa Manner -- Private Jokinen's marriage leave / Veijo Meri.

Contains The Wish by J. Sigurjónsson, The Golden Gate by D. Stefánsson, and Atoms and Madams by A. Thorðarson

This is a twenty-volume collection of Icelandic plays.

Contains The Pigeon Banquet by H. Laxness, The Seaway to Baghdad by J. Jakobsson, Mink by E. E. Halldórsson, Ten Variations by O. Björnsson, and Yolk-life by O. Björnsson

Four of Ibsen's most important plays in superb modern translations, part of the new Penguin Ibsen series. With her assertion that she is 'first and foremost a human being', Nora Helmer sent shockwaves throughout Europe when she appeared in Ibsen's greatest and most famous play, A Doll's House. Depicting one woman's struggle to be treated as a rational human being, and not merely a wife, mother or fragile doll, the play changed the course of theatrical history and sparked debates worldwide about the roles of men and women in society. Ibsen's follow-up Ghosts was no less radical, with its unrelenting investigation into religious hypocrisy, family secrets and sexual double-dealing. These two masterpieces are accompanied here by The Pillars of the Community and An Enemy of the People, both set in Norwegian coastal towns and exploring the tensions and dark compromises at the heart of society. The new Penguin series of Ibsen's major plays offer the best available editions in English, under the general editorship of Tore Rem. The plays have been freshly translated by the best modern translators and are based on the recently published, definitive Norwegian edition of Ibsen's works. They all include new introductions and editorial apparatus by leading scholars.

In these four unforgettably intense plays, Henrik Ibsen explores the complex nature of truth, the tension between freedom and responsibility, and the terrible pull that the past exerts over the present. In The Wild Duck an idealist destroys a family by exposing the lie behind his friend's marriage. In Rosmersholm, a respectable man is driven to extremes by guilt over his wife's death, while in The Lady from the Sea a woman is caught between her family and the enticement of the wild sea. And in Hedda Gabler, one of Ibsen's most famous and vivid anti-heroines struggles to break free from the conventional life she has created for herself, with tragic results.

Garton and Sehmsdorf provide an introduction to contemporary Norwegian theater, a list of English translations of the 4 dramatists' works, and a select bibliography...The plays at hand are meant to reflect the diversity of contemporary Norwegian drama.

"If the essence of drama is conflict, the crossing of wills, of culture versus barbarism, the Norwegians have a natural spring to tap into—and it is explosive" (Line Rosvoll, Artistic Director of the Norwegian Centre of New Playwriting, from her Introduction). The Oberon Anthology of Contemporary Norwegian Plays brings together a selection of exciting playwrights reflecting the breadth and vitality of Norwegian theatre's booming new writing scene. Six plays, translated by Neil Howard and published for the first time in English, demonstrate a common willingness to push formal boundaries and to find new ways to tackle the universal experiences of the human condition; grief and loss, violence, manipulation, abuse and despair. Grief Work by Eirik Fauske; Kinder K by Kristofer Grønskag; A Remarkable Person by Pernille Dahl Johnsen; Time Without Books by Lene Therese Teigen; Why Not Before by Liv Heløe; Watching Shadows by Hans Petter Blad.

Contains The Gauntler (en hanske), Beyond Our Power (over evne), and The New System (det ny system)

Contains Love and Geography (Geografi og Kjaerlighed), Beyond Human Might (Over evne: annet stykke), and Laboremus (Laboremus)

Contains four of Strindberg's lesser known one act plays: Outlaw, Simoom, Facing Death, and The Bond

The five plays in this volume represent Strindberg (1849-1912) at the height of his dramatic powers. In his great works Strindberg is a playwright second to none, and as such he shares the world stage with his major contemporaries: Ibsen, Chekhov, Pirandello, and Shaw. The Father (1887) is one of the great modern tragedies and has had enormous impact on some of the leading dramatists of the 20th century. In The Father a husband and wife struggle tragically for possession of their only child. Miss Julie (1888) is one of the most performed plays of the modern repertory, a coruscating battle of the sexes between a young noble woman and her father's young valet for whom she has developed a neurotic passion. The Stronger (1888-89) is a naturalistic blockbuster—a three-character one-act in which the central character never appears, and one of the two female rivals for his love says nothing. Great actresses have flocked to this challenge, both silent and verbal. The final two plays, A Dream Play (1901) and The Ghost Sonata (1907), find Strindberg in an Expressionist mode, where time, place, characters, and situation merge, split, melt, and reach heights of theatricalism unmatched since. Mueller's brilliant new translations renew the currency of these works in the canon of modern theatrical masterpieces.

Contains Playing with Fire, Creditors, Dance of Death, Part I, Dance of Death, Part II, and Storm

Lars Norén, generally considered Sweden's greatest playwright since August Strindberg, has written about 75 plays. While they are regularly performed in Nordic and European countries and have been translated into several languages, English-language readers were deprived of his major works until 2013, when Chaucer Press Books published Two Plays: And Give Us the Shadows and Autumn and Winter, followed by Three Plays: Demons, Act, and Terminal 3 (2014). This volume presents two more of Norén's major plays in English, including: Blood (1994), about a wife and husband tormented over their missing son and the husband's male lover, who are eventually brought together in a heartrending denouement as the unbearable truth of their lives is revealed; and War (2005), a raw depiction of a family reduced to mere survival, set in an unnamed war-torn country. Their world explodes when the mother and her daughters must confront the unexpected return of her husband, who was presumed to be killed in action and is now blind and virtually devoid of any humanity.

Contains Markurells of Wadköping, The Baron's Will, Swedenhielms, and Mr. Sleeman Is Coming

The plays in this volume are all concerned with the complexities of human relationships in modern-day Sweden. They include A Matter of the Soul by Ingmar Bergman, which won the Prix Italia in 1990, Munich - Athens by Lars Noren, Summer Nights by Agneta Pleijel and Red Light by Stig Larsson (Google Books).

August Strindberg is often considered the father of modern Swedish literature. His vast output of plays was innovative in style and form. Volume 1 of Selected Plays presents selections from the beginning of his career, before Strindberg's period of psychotic attacks in the 1890s. Master Olof (1872) is a historical drama set in early Reformation Sweden, influenced by Ibsen and Shakespeare. Two of his most produced plays today, The Father (1887) and Miss Julie (1888), are examples of his naturalistic plays. Strindberg described Creditors (1888), a tragicomedy, as his "most mature work." The Stronger (1889), a playlet, is a favorite in acting classes. Playing with Fire (1893) is one of his few comedies. These plays deal with Strindberg's preoccupation with power struggles and sexual warfare.

Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754) was the foremost representative of the Danish-Norwegian Enlightenment and also a European figure of note. He published significant works in natural law and history, but also a very important body of moral essays and epistles. He authored several engaging autobiographies and European travelogues, a major utopian novel that was an immediate European succes, interesting satires that advocated women's education and career, and a large number of comedies. These comedies secured Holberg's status as the most significant playwright in Scandinavia before Ibsen and Strindberg. Through his extensive oeuvre, but especially through his plays, Holberg had a decisive influence on the formation of modern Danish as a literary language, something that was a self-conscious effort on the part of a man who saw himself as an educator of the public. Despite his contemporary impact at home and abroad and his ongoing popularity in Scandinavia, he remains little known in the wider world of enlightenment studies. It is the aim of this volume to revive Holberg as a major figure from a minor corner of the Enlightenment world by presenting the full variety of his work and giving it a European context.

This broad, interdisciplinary work explores the often overlooked contributions of women to the cultural life of the Danish Golden Age. Featuring chapters on novelist Thomasine Gyllembourg, actress Johanne Luise Heiberg, and feminist writer Mathilde Fibiger, it spans three generations of women from the early to late Golden Age, examining the perceived proper role of women in Danish society at the time, including an examination of views by male Golden Age writers and thinkers such as Søren Kierkegaard and Hans Lassen Martensen. Offering a panorama of personalities, literary texts, theater performances, artworks, and sociopolitical debates, Women of the Danish Golden Age is a rich appreciation of the importance of women to Denmark's cultural life during one of its most flourishing periods. 

This study analyses the Finnish National Theatre's activities throughout the decades during which the post-war generation with its new societal and theatrical views was rising to power, and during which Europe, divided by the Iron Curtain, was maturing to break the boundaries dividing it. Pirkko Koski summarizes the activities of the Finnish National Theatre as a cultural factor and as a part of the Finnish theatre field during 1970s and 1980s. Alongside this he examines the general requirements, resources and structures for activity, including artists, places, geographical position, performances and the analysis on the societal conditions. This book will be of great interest to scholars and students of European theatre and history.

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson's drama has in our time ended up in oblivion, while Henrik Ibsen's is still played and read all over the world. In this book, Frode Helmich Pedersen rereads Bjørnson's contemporary plays and shows that they are still surprisingly fresh and sharp. He starts from the earliest reception of these plays in newspapers and magazines and documents that in his own time Bjørnson was at least as irritating and troublesome a figure as Ibsen was. In addition, he presents a number of interpretations of these plays, where their considerable literary and ideological richness is highlighted and discussed. The book's main thesis is that the "uncleanness" of Bjørnson's poetry should not be considered a weakness, but rather is inextricably linked to the boundary-breaking literary power of these plays (publisher's description, translated).

In the history of modern theatre, Ibsen is one of the dominating figures. The sixteen chapters of this 1994 Companion explore his life and work, providing an invaluable reference work for students. In chronological terms they range from an account of Ibsen's earliest pieces, through the years of rich experimentation, to the mature 'Ibsenist' plays that made him famous towards the end of the nineteenth century. Among the thematic topics are discussions of Ibsen's comedy, realism, lyric poetry and feminism. Substantial chapters account for Ibsen's influence on the international stage and his challenge to theatre and film directors and playwrights today. Essential reference materials include a full chronology, list of works and essays on twentieth-century criticism and further reading.

Ibsen's plays rank among those most frequently performed world-wide, rivaled only by Brecht, Chekhov, Shakespeare, and the Greek tragedies. By the time Ibsen died in 1906, his plays had already conquered the theaters of the Western world. Inviting rapturous praise as well as fierce controversy, they were performed in Europe, North America, and Australia, contributing greatly to the theater, culture, and social life of these continents. Soon after Ibsen's death, his plays entered the stages of East Asia—Japan, China, Korea—as well as Africa and Latin America. But while there exist countless studies on Ibsen the dramatist and the significance of his plays within different cultures written mainly by literary scholars, none of them examine the ways in which Ibsen's plays were performed, or the impact of such performances on the theater, social life, and politics of these cultures. In Global Ibsen, contributors look at the way performances of Ibsen's plays address problems typical to modern societies all over the world, including: the inferior social status of women, the decay of bourgeois family life and values, religious fundamentalism, industrial pollution and corporate cover-up, and/or the loss of and search for identity.

Henrik Ibsen's drama is the most prominent and lasting contribution of the cultural surge seen in Scandinavian literature in the later nineteenth century. When he made his debut in Norway in 1850, the nation's literary presence was negligible, yet by 1890 Ibsen had become one of Europe's most famous authors. Contrary to the standard narrative of his move from restrictive provincial origins to liberating European exile, Narve Fulsås and Tore Rem show how Ibsen's trajectory was preconditioned on his continued embeddedness in Scandinavian society and culture, and that he experienced great success in his home markets. This volume traces how Ibsen's works first travelled outside Scandinavia and studies the mechanisms of his appropriation in Germany, Britain and France. Engaging with theories of book dissemination and world literature, and re-assessing the emergence of 'peripheral' literary nations, this book provides new perspectives on the work of this major figure of European literature and theatre.

Henrik Ibsen, the 'Father of Modern Drama', came from a seemingly inauspicious background. What are the key contexts for understanding his appearance on the world stage? This collection provides thirty contributions from leading scholars in theatre studies, literary studies, book history, philosophy, music, and history, offering a rich interdisciplinary understanding of Ibsen's work, with chapters ranging across cultural and aesthetic contexts including feminism, scientific discovery, genre, publishing, music, and the visual arts. The book ends by charting Ibsen's ongoing globalization and gives valuable overviews of major trends within Ibsen studies. Accessibly written, while drawing on the most recent scholarship, Ibsen in Context provides unique access to Ibsen the man, his works, and their afterlives across the world.

This study examines the intellectual campaigns that transformed the Christiania Theatre from a Danish stage into the forerunner of Norway's National Theatre. It focuses on the culture wars between the Norwegian nationalists and the so-called Danomanians in the 1830s; the promotion of the Hegelian and national romantic cultural-agenda in the 1840s and 1850s; Bjornson's and Ibsen's rejection of both radical nationalism and the entrenched Danishness of the theater in the 1850s; and Bjornson's ambitious attempt to reform the theater in the mid-1860s.

This book adopts a comparative approach to examine some curious and original aspects of the dramaturgy and the scenic conception of two great Nordic writers, Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg. As far as Ibsen is concerned, the book looks at the connection between his works and the European Risorgimenti, the anthropological relationship with the rites and atmospheres of Southern Italy, and the problematic link with theatrical tradition. With regards to Strindberg, light is shed on his intense identification with Euripides, but also with his "enemy" Ibsen, and his interest in modern theatrical reformers. There is an almost "archaeological" attention to the first "great actors"--Betty Hennings, Eleonora Duse, Ermete Zacconi - who interpreted Ibsen and Strindberg's dramas, and to some of the more modern of Ibsen's stage sets put forward by those who sought to go beyond his bourgeois formula. Ibsen and Strindberg are read and interpreted from a cultural point of view which is far removed from their historical and geographical setting, and are often observed through a reversed telescope which sheds light paradoxically on revealing aspects of their work.

A journey through the history of Norwegian drama is like walking from Ibsen's shadow to Fosse's light, writes Ivo de Figueiredo. For the first time, a comprehensive work on the development of drama in Norway has been published. The book deals with Norwegian stage drama from 1890 until well into the 2000s. Here, the most important playwrights are presented together with close readings of selected texts. Gunnar Heiberg, Ronald Fangen, Jens Bjørneboe, Tor Åge Bringsværd and Cecilie Løveid are some of the playwrights mentioned (publisher's description, translated).

August Strindberg and Visual Culture addresses the multiplicity of Strindberg's artistic and literary output. The book charts the vital intersections between theatre, aesthetic theory, and visual elements in his work that have been left largely unexplored. Rather than following traditional genre-bound critical approaches, this book focuses on the intermediality of individual works, the corpus as a whole, and their connections to a wide array of historical and contemporary artists, writers, photographers, film, theatre and museum practitioners. The book is beautifully illustrated, with many never-before-seen images from Strindberg's work, and includes contributions from actress Liv Ullmann, director Robert Wilson, and curator and museum director Daniel Birnbaum.

August Strindberg is one of the most enduring of nineteenth-century dramatists, and is also an internationally recognised novelist, autobiographer, and painter. This Companion presents contributions by leading international scholars on different aspects of Strindberg's highly colourful life and work. The essays focus primarily on his most celebrated plays; these include the Naturalist Dramas, The Father and Miss Julie; the experimental dramas with which he created a true modernist theatre - To Damascus and A Dream Play; and the Chamber Plays of 1908 which, like so much of his work, exerted a powerful influence on much later twentieth-century drama. His plays are contextualised for what they contribute both to the history of drama and developments in theatre practice, and other essays clarify the enormous importance to these dramas of his other work, most notably the autobiographical novel Inferno, and his lifelong interest in science, the occult, sexual politics, and the visual arts.

The theater must become a school for laughter and tears, entertainment and insight, where the validity of contemporary drama is tested in the same way as the traditions of cultural heritage. This is how the theater man Peter Oskarsson formulated himself back in 1981. He is also something of a protagonist in this book that the wise, experienced and independent theater critic Henrik Sjögren has written about a theater that is relevant in the community center, where the theater would form a natural part of public education. Sjögren claims that folk theater has been created from below as folk park theater and workers' play, from above it has been created by the Riksteatern to bring theater to the whole country. Sjögren takes his starting point in theoretical explanations and declarations from the 1920s with Per Albin Hansson's speech or as early as 1912 with ABF's declaration to the practice in Malmö from 1944. Sjögren writes with more than 50 years under his belt as a critic and with even more years as an observer. Now he believes that the folk theater has been let down in many places, such as in Malmö where it was once important. In the book, the reader meets folk theatre's long history, directors, actors, playwrights and critics. The book is well illustrated with many cast photos and photos from various sets (publisher's description, translated).

Strindberg on International Stages and Strindberg in Translation is a collection of scholarly and critical articles looking upon Strindberg from different perspectives.Three articles are case studies about Strindberg performances in different countries: namely, the United States, Italy and Portugal. Three further articles approach the problems of the transformation of the text on the stage. One of these essays is based on Strindberg's texts about drama from an aesthetical point of view; another from the perspective of a Strindberg director; and the third provides an analysis of the postdramatic performances of a Swedish suburban theatre group.This postdramatic aspect is also important in one of the contributions providing an analysis of Strindberg's Chamber Plays, which is followed by an article where the function of music in particular is reflected upon.Translation problems are important in all the countries discussed in this volume, especially Portugal, and the fact that Strindberg wrote his plays in different languages during different periods of his life raises important questions such as: if there is no indisputable first text, what is a translation? Where do we draw the line between a translation and an adaptation? How does the idea of translation change over time? One article in this collection revolves around such questions.In the final section of this volume, readers are introduced to the digital Stockholm University Strindberg Corpus, consisting of seven of Strindberg's autobiographical works with linguistic annotation. The authors in this section describe the novels included in the corpus by keywords, and compare Strindberg's use of emotionally charged words with selected prose of both his contemporaries and present-day authors.These ten articles read together pose the most relevant questions with regard to Strindberg performances and Strindberg translations, and will be of interest to modern Strindberg scholars, Strindberg enthusiasts and Strindberg directors.

In this volume Strindberg's accomplishments as a dramatist are set against his achievements in other fields, as an autobiographer, painter, letter writer and theatre director. There are studies of individual plays, in which Strindberg's theatre is related both to naturalism and the theatre of the absurd, and of the role played by his life-long interest in historical drama as a means of mirroring his own experience. Other essays consider the problems posed by Strindberg's preoccupation with converting his own life into literature and the relationship between his later plays and the musical Expressionism of Schoenberg and Berg as well as the importance he placed on letter-writing as a model for writing of all kinds; these letters are also used to explore his ideas about acting and theatre generally. A recurring concern is with the extraordinary period of mental and emotional turmoil, known as the Inferno Crisis, in which Strindberg refashioned himself as a writer; not least through his ground-breaking work as a painter. The collection is prefaced by an account of the difficulties Strindberg's works have encountered in their reception in England and concludes with a 'penance for Strindberg' in the form of a wide-ranging study of the nineteenth-century actress that re-examines the concern with character and theatricality of the earlier essays in a new context.