Nietzschean Variations: Politics, Interest, and Education in Ibsen's An Enemy of the People
Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People (1882) has had an unusual reception. Following A Doll’s House (1879) andGhosts (1881), plays that were scandalized upon performance only to be counted, relatively soon, among Ibsen’s most important works, An Enemy of the Peoplewas caught up by history in a different way. While the play has, no doubt, enjoyed bouts of popularity – including the many stagings that followed in thewake of its publication – late twentieth-centurycritics have worried about the political implications of Dr. Stockmann’s elitism and sometimes even compared it to the rhetoric of the later Nationalist Socialistmovement inGermany (Sage 2006, 3–5, 310–311; Ferguson 1996, 280ff ). The kind of elitist sentiments Dr. Stockmann airs inAn Enemy of the People are often associated with the teaching of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s work was much debated and discussed in Scandinavia when Ibsen was working on the play. Thus, critics have emphasized how Ibsen’s play resonates with a kind of aristocratic pathos that is not unlike the onewe find inwork of theGerman philosopher.While such a reading was prefigured in an essay by Anathon Aall at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, we findmore recent versions of the argument in works by Noreng (1969), de Figueiredo (2007) and Kittang (2005). In his reading ofAn Enemy of the People, Kittang speaks Ibsen Studies, 2014 Vol. 14, No. 2, 109–135, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15021866.2014.1000659
Choleric Fictions: Epidemiology, Medical Authority, and An Enemy of the People
In its dramatic use of the emerging sciences of sanitation and prophylaxis, An Enemy of the People extends the medical field of Ghosts and other early plays to the triumphs and promises of the newly implemented germ theory that was transforming the medical and social landscape of disease. In its exploration of the culturally ascendant man of science, it addresses the communal and psychologically problematic dimensions of a missionary reformism in a society resistant to its demands.
The Game Planners: Transforming Canada's Sport System.
The Game Planners studies the policy-making process in six Canadian national sports organizations, each of which deals with a different high-profile Olympic event. The authors argue that the creation of a "high-performance" sport system in Canada is due to pressure from three areas: the Canadian government, the physical education profession, and the sports community.