Preface

Ibsen’s 1869 comedy, The League of Youth, was highly successful on the Norwegian and Scandinavian stages during the author’s own lifetime. In prose, and through comedy, he deals with contemporary problems of a political, economic and social nature; a Norwegian provincial town is the setting for a play which aims at problematizing agonizing problems of the modern age. Even though this seems important and familiar enough to us today, this play is seldom read, written about or staged today. However, Klaus Müller-Wille, in his article “‘Spidsborgere i Blæst’ – Henrik Ibsen’s De unges Forbund and the Crisis of the Radical Political Imaginary”, aims to give a reading of the play that can bring forth the strong and topical, even provocative issues embedded in the play. Inspired by Cornelius Castoriadis’s concept of the political imaginary Müller-Wille clarifies the critique of a modern political culture, “the crisis of politics and history” in Ibsen’s world, still with us today. In order to reconstruct the “political and historical-philosophical implications of the play”, he also draws on the writings of Karl Marx and Søren Kierkegaard. Torbjørn Andersen’s article, “The Contemporary Reception of Little Eyolf and its Presentation in Henrik Ibsens Skrifter”, also focuses on Ibsen’s works and their immediate context. Andersen gives a thorough account of Little Eyolf ’s first phase of reception, highlighting many interesting aspects of the early discussion of the play, above all in Scandinavia. His rich material is important in itself, but it is also put to use in a well-balanced critique of the most “authoritative” account of the play’s reception today, namely the one presented in Henrik Ibsens skrifter (HIS, Henrik Ibsen’s Writings). Hence, he shows not only what is missing in the reception history given in HIS, but also reflects on the (lacking) editorial principles of HIS. His article, then, not only gives important new information about the reception of Little Eyolf, but also represents a contribution to the on-going discussion of the philological and editorial principles of large editions like this one.