Goethe, Marx, Ibsen and the creation of a world literature

Martin Puchner

doi:10.7557/13.3349

Authors

Martin Puchner Mellon School of Theater and Performance Research at Harvard University.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7557/13.3349

Keywords:

Goethe, Marx, Ibsen

Abstract

This essay was first presented at an Ibsen workshop at the Center for Ibsen Studies in Oslo in 2011 and further developed as a keynote address at the XIIIth International Ibsen Conference in Tromsø in the summer of 2012. Participants in both events helped me significantly develop this piece, including Tore Rem, Frode Helland, Narve Fulsa˚s, and Lisbeth Pettersen Wærp. First printed in Ibsen Studies 2013, vol. 13, no. 4.

Author Biography

Martin Puchner, Mellon School of Theater and Performance Research at Harvard University.

MARTIN PUCHNER received his PhD from Harvard University in 1998. After teaching at Columbia University for 12 years, he returned to Harvard, where he is the Byron and Anita Wien Professor of Drama and of English and Comparative Literature. Among his publications are The Drama of Ideas: Platonic Provocations in Theater and Philosophy (Oxford, 2010; winner of the Joe A. Callaway Prize for best book in drama or theater), Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos, and the Avant-Gardes (Princeton, 2006; winner of the James Russell Lowell Award for best book in literary criticism awarded by the MLA), and Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-Theatricality and Drama (Hopkins, 2002, 2011). He is the founding director of the Mellon School of Theater and Performance Research at Harvard University. E-mail:

puchner@fas.harvard.edu