At the Limits of Realism: Late Ibsen and other Neo-Romantic Estrangements

"At the Limits of Realism" argues for the anti-transcendent character of The Wild Duck, The Master Builder, and When We Dead Awaken. Henrik Ibsen returns to the strange and fantastic in these later works, but does so in a mode that both rejects the progress of the 19th century -- its claim to have moved beyond romanticism -- and looks askance at the future, predicting a repetition of processes of idealization as degradation. Ibsen's depictions of the fin de siecle neither resurrect the romantic-spiritual nor profess continued faith in realism's alternative, humanistic and progressive transcendence. I arrive at this understanding of Ibsen's anti-transcendent neoromanticism by reading his plays against contemporary criticism and against the backdrop of French symbolism. Thus, "at the limits" refers not only to neoromanticism as a literary terminus, but also to border crossing -- and, thereby, to the nation. Because I aim more to estrange than to discard the realist label, each chapter makes a study of a play or person that breaches or extends the limits of 19th century realism. I begin by analyzing The Wild Duck, which depicts a crisis in humanistic meaning, treating with irony a figure of reproductive futurity: the romantic child. I then move on to a more estranging context for realism: theatrical symbolism in Paris. In Chapter Two, I compare The Master Builder with Maurice Maeterlinck's symolist theory of "static drama" and with his play, The Intruder. In Chapter Three, I consider the extension of realism that takes place via Herman Bang's advocacy for Ibsen in Paris, his understanding of modern theater as self-exposure, and his critique of nationalism. Finally, I return to Scandinavia but not to realism: Chapter Four ends on Ibsen's most neoromantic territory, the slippery slope of When We Dead Awaken. A focus on neoromanticism allows an alternative means of entering into critical discourses on realism and modernism, but this is not the usual attack on literary realism's faith in representation. Instead, I am suspicious of the ideology of realism found in criticism, or in a defensive stance that neglects the full extent of negation, irony, and absurdity in late Ibsen.