Abstract
Abstract
Henrik Ibsen is one of the most important Western dramatists in China. It was he who inspired the Chinese to create a completely new style of art: the Spoken Drama. For the last few decades, however, Ibsen scholars in China have been only focused on the playwright s iconoclast impact, and the Ibsen after the 1980s was seldom studied. My thesis intends to present the contemporary Ibsen in China, particularly on his intercultural traveling between the East and the West in the context of ideological confusion, globalization and cultural consumerism. Through the analyses of four Ibsen productions, I want to point out that nowadays Ibsen has been thoroughly Sinicized, not only Chinese in content, but also localized in style. The increased communications between cultures have not at all reduced the political importance of Ibsen. Surprisingly, this Intercultural Ibsen has become a strategic agent in power contests, not only between the Chinese intellectuals and the ruling Party, but also between the Oriental and the Occidental.
The study consists of three chapters. After a literary review of Ibsen reception in the past one hundred years, the first chapter concentrates on the 1983 production of Peer Gynt, connecting this performance with the re-emergence of what the scholars later called, modern China s Second Enlightenment. The second chapter studies the 1998 Doll s House. Through the Norwegian Nora s imprisonment in a Chinese courtyard, the production reveals a power shifting between the West and the East. The third chapter compares the different fate between An Enemy of the People and Hedda Gabler in Ibsen Year 2006. By elaborating the performances back stage among scholars, government officials and ordinary audience, these productions mapped out a power counterbalance on domestic as well as international levels.
The research illustrates that though influenced by cultural consumerism and information explosion, the culture-crossing Ibsen in contemporary China is still dominated by the political correctness.