Diderot, Ibsen, and the Drame Lyrique in Scandinavia

Abstract

Diderot devised what he himself perceived as a completely new kind of contemporary theater. This part of his output has been somewhat overshadowed by his more general contributions to the French Enlightenment. A huge interest in his Encyclop edie and in his highly experimental narrative prose developed in the 1950s and 1960s, alongside the rise of le nouveau roman (Fellows 1970, 96). Meanwhile, to this day, his crucial texts on theater remain largely inaccessible to modern readers unfamiliar with the French language. His plays are rarely put on by theaters, in contrast to his philosophical texts, which, paradoxically, are regularly staged (Frantz 2004, 36). His innovative drama and theater theory should, however, be of particular interest to the study of Ibsen’s contemporary plays, with which they resonate in arresting ways. A whole range of similarities will strike anyone who compares Ibsen’s contemporary plays with Diderot’s drama and writings on theater from the 1750s. The question of Ibsen’s turn towards a new form of contemporary drama at a rather late stage in his career has puzzled critics since his own lifetime. A common opinion is summed up by a student writing in the year after his death: ‘Ibsen is French Technic plus Northern Genius’ (Robbins 1907, 4). These two elements, the method of the well-made play as practiced by Scribe and his school, and a somewhat mysterious northern component, are echoed in scholarship throughout the twentieth century. In his seminal study Ibsen’s Dramatic Technique, P. D. F. Tennant