Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman and Time

This article discusses Henrik Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman and the play's engagement with the difficulties of reconciling dramatic time and prosaic or subjective time. I argue that John Gabriel Borkman can be read as a meta-fictional text that explores the time after traditional drama has...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Modern drama 2012-10, Vol.55 (3), p.287-303
Main Author: Sørensen, Eli Park
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Drama
Dramatists
Ibsen, Henrik (1828-1906)
Literary criticism
Norwegian literature
Theater
Time
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:This article discusses Henrik Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman and the play's engagement with the difficulties of reconciling dramatic time and prosaic or subjective time. I argue that John Gabriel Borkman can be read as a meta-fictional text that explores the time after traditional drama has come to an end. The actual drama (or what would have been the drama had the playwright adopted a traditional dramatic form) has been displaced to the past and replaced by a present that is characterized by an undramatic, prosaic, or subjective temporality. At the same time, this is , of course, the drama of John Gabriel Borkman , and thus, the play meta-fictionally explores a split temporality. Ibsen's penultimate play examines with painstaking insistence dramatic time's lateness, a lateness that, on the one hand, displaces everything; while on the other hand, it renders all the unresolved issues of the past meaningless, insignificant.
ISSN:0026-7694
1712-5286
1712-5286
DOI:10.1353/mdr.2012.0043