Eivind Tjønneland, ed.: Henrik Ibsens Kongsemnerne.

Abstract

This book is based on presentations given at a seminar held in 2013 at the Ibsen Museum in Oslo to commemorate the publication of Kongsemnerne (The Pretenders) 150 years ago. The book contains ten articles, discussing on the one hand the relation between The Pretenders as an artifact and its historical subject and on the other its reception over the past 150 years. The result is a very diverse collection with a multitude of perspectives and many stimulating insights. Eivind Tjønneland, who organized the seminar, and who is the editor of the book, has the opening chapter. After a presentation of the various chapters, he turns to an intertextual analysis of certain key concepts of the drama. His point of departure is the hypothesis that behind the production of this drama one can trace Ibsen’s reception of certain phrases or fragments of phrases that have inspired him. A key concept in this connection is “kongstanke” (“kingly thought” or “high calling”), which in this case refers to the political vision of Haakon that Skule envies. Tjønneland assumes that Ibsen has coined this term based on newspaper articles that he must have read, some of which concerned the large choral fair in Bergen during the summer of 1863, where he was present; some of them also concerned the recent death of the historian Peter Andreas Munch, who was a leading historian at the time, and the historian upon whom Ibsen draws in many of his early historical dramas. The singers arriving from all over Norway were described as merging into one man; it was also suggested that