Preface

Abstract

This decade’s first issue of Ibsen Studies dives into what Franco Moretti named the “core” of literary Europe, with three articles exploring conjunctions and interconnections between Ibsen and influential currents in Germany, France, and Britain—both before and after Ibsen’s lifetime. In “The Struggle for Existence: Ibsen’s The Wild Duck (1884),” Lisbeth Pettersen Wærp reads The Wild Duck in light of Darwin’s notions of domesticated diversity. Wærp broadens the metaphorical resonance of the loft by exploring its many constituents, that is all the animals, as well as books, furniture, and other objects. Contrary to much existing Ibsen scholarship, she argues that Ibsen does not equate domestication with degeneration. Rather, she sees the loft as “a value-neutral image of existential struggle under differing prevailing conditions” that, in turn, reflects the Ekdal and Werle families in the play. In other words, the article asks us to envision how the characters are embedded in a complex psychosocial force field. Martin Wåhlberg takes on a less frequently explored topic in “Diderot, Ibsen, and the Drame lyrique in Scandinavia.” The article expands upon previous work by Erik Østerud and Toril Moi, and traces how French writer and philosopher Denis Diderot (1713–1784) anticipates key elements of Ibsen’s drama. As Robert Weimann asserts regarding the practice of intertextuality, texts feed off each other in multiple ways. Wåhlberg does not argue that the relation and relevance of Diderot to Ibsen is a matter of direct influence; still, striking similarities emerge from Wåhlberg’s comparative analysis. He points out the mix between tragedy and comedy, prose plays, contemporary topics, domestic settings, and retrospective techniques, to name a few. Wåhlberg identifies Ibsen as Diderot’s heir, the “genius to realize the full potential of his dramatic reform.” The article thus contributes to an understanding of how French literature both circulated in