4-part course by Lisa VanDamme (4.5 hours)

Ibsen is known as an iconoclast, an idol-smasher, who challenged traditional views of class, of government, of marriage—of morality. His plays, radical and scandalous in their time, have gone on to immense, world-wide popularity, second only to Shakespeare in frequency of performance.

In this course, Miss VanDamme discusses three of Ibsen’s great plays: Brand, a poetic epic about a zealous priest who tries to lead a cowardly, compromising populace to spiritual purity with his “All or Nothing” creed; A Doll’s House, the revolutionary dramatization of a conventional wife’s rejection of the traditional roles for women, when she discovers that they have deprived her of a self; and The Wild Duck, Ibsen’sdesperately cynical expression of his conclusion that the world could not be reached by his ideas, and was thus irredeemable.

Miss VanDamme guides the class through a purposeful analysis of the plot, characterization, and theme of each play, and endeavors to show that even the most depressing of his works are rich with inspiration.