This is the first major collection in English of August Strindberg's letters, the most vital and wide-ranging body of correspondence in Scandinavian literature. Of ten thousand surviving letters, Michael Robinson has selected and translated more than five hundred of the most important, which trace Strindberg's development and provide a comprehensive view of the life and work of this towering figure in European literary and theatrical Modernism.
In this groundbreaking and comprehensive study, Julian Murphet examines how dramatists and prose writers at the turn of the twentieth century experimented with new forms of modern character. Old truisms of character such as consistency, depth, and verisimilitude are eschewed in favour of inconsistency, bad faith, and fragmentation.
While Kierkegaard is primarily known as a philosopher or religious thinker, his writings have also been used extensively by literary writers, critics and artists. This use can be traced in the work of major cultural figures not just in Denmark and Scandinavia but also in the wider world. They have been attracted to his creative mixing of genres, his complex use of pseudonyms, his rhetoric and literary style, and his rich images, parables and allegories. The present volume documents this influence in the different language groups and traditions. Tome III investigates the works of Swedish and Norwegian writers and artists inspired by Kierkegaard. In Sweden the novelist Victoria Benedictsson made use of Kierkegaard during the period of the so-called Modern Breakthrough, as did the playwright August Strindberg. Later Swedish writers have continued to draw on his thought, such as Selma Lagerlof, Lars Ahlin, Lars Gyllensten, and Carl-Henning Wijkmark. The Norwegian reception of Kierkegaard also began remarkably early and was shaped by the leading names in Norwegian cultural life. Despite his coy responses to questions about his relation to Kierkegaard, Henrik Ibsen clearly seems to have been inspired by the Dane in works such as Brand. Norwegian writer and poet Bjornstjerne Bjornson, who was influenced by the Modern Breakthrough movement, was also deeply inspired by Kierkegaard. Finally, the celebrated Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863-1944) closely studied key Kierkegaardian concepts such as anxiety, and his influence is notable in his iconic paintings such as The Scream.
As a writer, critic, and philosopher, Stanisław Brzozowski (1878-1911) left a lasting imprint on Polish culture. He absorbed virtually all topical intellectual trends of his time, adapting them for the needs of what he saw as his primary mission: the modernization of Polish culture. The essays of the volume reassess and contextualize Brzozowski's writings from a distinctly transnational vantage point. They shed light on often surprising and hitherto underrated affinities between Brzozowski and intellectual figures and movements in Eastern and Western Europe. Furthermore, they explore the presence of his ideas in twentieth-century century literary criticism and theory.
Robert Brain traces the origins of artistic modernism to specific technologies of perception developed in late-nineteenth-century laboratories. Brain argues that the thriving fin-de-siècle field of “physiological aesthetics,” which sought physiological explanations for the capacity to appreciate beauty and art, changed the way poets, artists, and musicians worked and brought a dramatic transformation to the idea of art itself.
I Part 2 : Strindberg (s. 106-184) behandlas TV-teaterföreställningar av Fadren (s. 106-116), Fröken Julie (s. 117-126), Den starkare (s. 127-133), Ett drömspel (s. 134-145), Oväder (s. 146-154), Spöksonaten (s. 155-171) och Pelikanen (s. 172-184).
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.
The social sciences have, ever since they were first established as academic disciplines, played a foundational role in most spheres of modern society - in policy-making, education, the media and public debate - and hence also, indirectly, for our self-understanding as social beings. The Social Scientific Gaze examines the discursive formation of academic social science in the historical context of the 'social question', that is, the protracted and wide-ranging discussions on the social problems of modernity that were being debated with increased intensity during the nineteenth century. Empirically, the study focuses on the Lorén Foundation, a combined private funding agency and early research institute, which was set up in 1885 to promote the rise of Swedish social science and to investigate the social question. Comprising an heuristic case, the close analysis of the Foundation makes it possible not only to reconstruct its basic ideas and practices, but also to situate its activities in broader historical and sociological context. The Social Scientific Gaze argues that the rise of Swedish social science may be seen not only as an 'answer' to the social 'question', but also as one attempt alongside others - including contemporary social literature, the philantropic reform movement, and the introduction of modern social policy - to conceptualize, mobilize and regulate the social sphere. In this process it is furthermore shown how an ambigious yet distinct 'social scientific gaze' was discursively articulated.
Examining the development of avant garde theatre from its inception in the 1890s right up to the present day, Christopher Innes exposes a central paradox of modern theatre; that the motivating force of theatrical experimentation is primitivism. What links the work of Strindberg, Artaud, Brook and Mnouchkine is an idealisation of the elemental and a desire to find ritual in archaic traditions. This widespread primitivism is the key to understanding both the political and aesthetic aspects of modern theatre and provides fresh insights into contemporary social trends. The original text, first published in 1981 as Holy Theatre, has been fully revised and up-dated to take account of the most recent theoretical developments in anthropology, critical theory and psychotherapy. New sections on Heiner Muller, Robert Wilson, Eugenio Barba, Ariane Mnouchkine and Sam Shepard have been added. As a result, the book now deals with all the major avant garde theatre practitioners, in Europe and North America. Avant Garde Theatre will be essential reading for anyone attempting to understand contemporary drama.
