TY - JOUR AU - Andersen, Anette Storli PY - 2015/02/23 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - The young Ibsen's theatre aesthetics - a theatre of the old free and mountainous north JF - Nordlit JA - Nordlit VL - 0 IS - 34 SE - Articles DO - 10.7557/13.3369 UR - https://septentrio.uit.no/index.php/nordlit/article/view/3369 SP - 237–244 AB - <p>The overall perspective of this article will be how drama <em>as theatre</em>, plays a part in the making of common worlds. I disagree with Benedict Anderson when he argues that the development of a <em>printed</em> national language was a basis for an imagined community and a condition for the modern nation state. When Ibsen and his contemporaries were fighting for a <em>Norwegian</em> theatre and theatre aesthetics in the 1850s and early 1860s, a written Norwegian language, which was distinctly different from written Danish, did not exist.</p><p>In order to explain how the Norwegians could have a common imagined community before 1814 and the background for the young Ibsen’s theatre aesthetics, it is necessary to take a look at the <em>theatre </em>traditions Ibsen and his generation inherited – from, what is often referred to as the generation of 1814. It is also necessary to establish a perspective, which does not focus on <em>written</em> or <em>printed</em> language, but on <em>theatre</em> as human <em>action</em>.</p><p>From 1850 to 1864 Ibsen was a prominent representative for a movement who wanted to develop a national theatre. The function of this national theatre was to be a mirror that could help the nation to correct itself, to strengthen the national self-consciousness. The theatre should be a place where the Norwegian people could experience an inner unity and an external demarcation of the nation. Ibsen participated in this national theatre project both as a theatre critic, as a playwright, as the author of prologues, epilogues and songs filled with national sentiment – and he was struggling for governmental support for the Norwegian theatre on this basis. </p> ER -