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    STUDIA PHILOLOGIA - Issue no. 3 / 2006  
         
  Article:   THE RECEPTION OF IBSEN IN THE UNITED STATES: A MIRROR OF CULTURAL AND POLITICAL CONCERNS, 1889-1910.

Authors:  ORM OVERLAND. 		 
       
         
  Abstract:  The Reception of Ibsen in the United States: A Mirror of Cultural and Political Concerns, 1889-1910. Ibsen was introduced in New York in the 1889-1890 season with A Doll’s House. Reactions to his plays in the first two decades were largely negative: Ibsen’s plays were incomprehensible, they had a message and were therefore not suitable for the theater, and they were obscene. A fourth issue, the question of their relevancy for the United States, had markedly different responses before and after 1900. In the 1890s Ibsen was found to be irrelevant for a healthy society. In the next decade, however, he was seen to address social ills in the United States. The reviews of American Ibsen productions in this period may not throw much new light on his plays, but they have much to say about prevalent social and cultural views. The critical debate that his plays engendered focused on those very issues that characterized American theater of the period and that precluded a warm American welcome of the Norwegian dramatist.  
         
     
         
         
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