Abstract
Ibsen’s major poetic dramas, Brand and Peer Gynt, were born of indignation. Denmark’s humiliating defeat at the hands of the Prussians in 1864, and Norway’s failure to offer any assistance to the Danes in their hour of need, filled Ibsen with a deep sense of outrage (compounded perhaps by feelings of guilt at his own personal failure to offer any tangible assistance to his fellow Scandinavians). This smouldering outrage, contrasting with the relative peace and calm of Rome, proved to be a fertile seed bed for his two dramatic poems exploring the nature of human will-power, commitment and freedom.
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References
See J. Macquarrie, Existentialism (London : Pelican Books, 1973), p. 210.
Hegel on Tragedy, edited by Anne and Henry Paolucci (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), p. 132.
Georg Brandes, Henrik Ibsen. A Critical Study (1899) (reprinted New York: Benjamin Blom, 1964), p. 53.
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© 1983 David Thomas
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Thomas, D. (1983). Philosophical and Aesthetic Ideas. In: Henrik Ibsen. Macmillan Modern Dramatists. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17275-7_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17275-7_3
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