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
The pillars of society
Since it is only reasonable to expect a title to give fair indication of what is to come, we ought to start by making sure our general title awakens all the right associations. To most speakers of English, the word ‘pillars’ in this context probably suggests first of all important people, in Dutch cultural history perhaps people such as Erasmus, William the Silent and some of the great 17th-century commercial and political leaders. To some it might also suggest the basic institutions that hold a society together, such as democratic government or religion, or perhaps even more abstract things such as peacefulness, decency and tolerance.
The camel in Somali oral traditions
The relationship between the camel and the Somali people has traditionally been reflected in Somalia's oral literary forms: Poems, proverbs, work songs, metaphores and tales of wisdom. The author h ...