‘Emperor of all the other animals’

Abstract

In a text like Peer Gynt, where the plot is secondary to the representation of characer, the main focus of analysis will be on the strategies for the construction of an image of the protagonist and the means to control the reader’s or spectator’s governing attitude to him in the various situations. Since the problem of identity can be said to be at the core of the poem, in existential as well as moral and metaphysical terms, the question of what or who is Peer Gynt will require a broad examination. To answer it in an unambiguous manner is probably to underestimate both the depth of the question as motivated in the text and the response of an open-minded reader. Nevertheless the question keeps coming to the surface throughout the poem, and it is answered a number of times, but hardly in a consistent or reassuring way.