This volume contains ten newly translated scholarly works by the esteemed Ibsen scholar Frode Helland on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. The essays are arranged in roughly chronological order and accompanied by brief introductions. In reflecting over Helland’s many contributions to the field, it struck the editors that there is much value in his early scholarship, but that because most of this was written in Norwegian, it has not reached the international readership it deserves. His scholarly production spans many phases, including an interest in the ironic, the aesthetic, the melancholic, the political, and the global Ibsen.

Frode Helland (1964) earned his doctoral degree from the University of Oslo in 1998. He was an associate professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology before returning to the University of Oslo to take up a position as professor of Scandinavian literature at the Centre for Ibsen Studies in 2004. He is currently serving as Dean of the Faculty of Humanities. In addition to producing several anthologies and the co-authored book A Global Doll’s House: Ibsen and Distant Visions (2016), Helland is the author of several single-authored monographs, including Melankoliens spill. En studie i Henrik Ibsens siste dramaer (2000; The Play of Melancholy: A Study of Henrik Ibsen’s Last Dramas), Voldens blomster? Henrik Wergelands Blomsterstykke i estetikkhistorisk lys (2003; Flowers of Violence? Henrik Wergeland’s Flower Compositions in Light of the History of Aesthetics), Ibsen in Practice: Relational Readings of Performance, Cultural Encounters and Power (2015), and Rasismens retorikk: Studier i norsk offentlighet (2019; The Rhetoric of Racism: Studies in Norwegian Public Discourse).

Contents

Preface

Articles

Irony and Experience in Hedda Gabler (1994)

This Is Not a Pipe. By Frode Helland and Arnfinn Åslund (1996)

A Reply from the Doctoral Candidate (1999)

On Peer Gynt, with a Constant Focus on the Concept of Dramatic Irony (2000)

Henrik Ibsen and Politics: A Doll’s House (2006)

Ibsen and Politics: Ghosts (2007)

Reviews

The Emperor of Interpretation (1991)

The Birth of Modernism: Henrik Ibsen (2007)

Idealism as Problem and Necessity (2015)

After Ibsen? (2016)

Sources for Frode Helland’s Original Essays

Works Cited

Tabula Gratulatoria

Published in the following formats:
Paper: ISBN 978-82-8390-157-3, 181 pp, paperback, format: 17x24 cm, weight 0,4 kg,, year of publication 2024, language: English

Open access: omp.novus.no