The Ibsen Cycle: The Design of the Plays from Pillars of Society to When We Dead Awaken.

About The Ibsen Cycle: The Design of the Plays from Pillars of Society to When We Dead Awaken

The Ibsen Cycle: The Design of the Plays from Pillars of Society to When We Dead Awaken is a book by the British literary researcher and Ibsen scholar Brian Johnston (1932–2013). Johnston emphasizes the impact of the German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel (1770–1831) on the final twelve realistic contemporary dramas of Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906). In the Introduction to the book he describes his project as "a complete revaluation and reinterpretation of Ibsen’s methods and intentions as the dramatist of the twelve realistic plays from The Pillars of Society (1877) to When We Dead Awaken (1899)" that interprets them as being part of a single literary cycle that is based on the philosophical ideas of Hegel and follows the structure of Hegel's book The Phenomenology of Mind.