Shpitsburg Anna Yurievna – undergraduate student of the Faculty of Philology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Department of Modern Western European Languages and Literatures
Professor of Scandinavian literature (University of Oslo, Ibsen Study Center) Ellen Rees calls into question two persistent myths related to Henrik Ibsenʼs attitude to the popular theatrical genres dominating Europe in the 1850s: Catilina (1850) became the first “serious” Norwegian play in seven years, Ibsen distanced himself from “light” plays written by foreign playwrights, such as Eugene Scribe. The purpose of the article is to take a critical look at the literary and historical representation of Norwegian theatrical culture and present arguments in favor of a more open approach to stage texts to which Ibsen was related during his work in the theater, which leads to a new understanding of how the vaudeville genre could influence Ibsenʼs perception of the ideas of romantic idealism.
Anti-idealism; Ibsen; literary history; Saint John’s Night; Scribe; vaudeville