Tropes Revisited: Evert Sprinchorn's Ibsen's Kingdom: The Man and His Works and Recent Historical Research in Ibsen Studies

Abstract

Evert Sprinchorn’s biography of the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen, Ibsen’s Kingdom: The Man and His Works, published by Yale University Press in 2020, is riddled throughout with errors and presents neither new information about “the Man” nor particularly insightful interpretations of “His Works.” Sprinchorn has missed what amounts to a revolution in historical and biographical research into Ibsen’s life spearheaded by Ivo de Figueiredo’s two-volume biography Henrik Ibsen: Mennesket (2006; Henrik Ibsen: The Human Being) and Henrik Ibsen: Masken (2007; Henrik Ibsen: The Mask).1 De Figueiredo’s groundbreaking study is now available in one volume in Robert Ferguson’s English translation, also published by Yale University Press (de Figueiredo 2019). The 2010 publication of Den biografiske Ibsen (The Biographical Ibsen) marks a major advancement in Ibsen scholarship overlooked by Sprinchorn; this collection of articles calls into question the historical accuracy of many of the persistent biographical tropes about Ibsen (Sæther, Dingstad, Kittang, and Rekdal 2010). Sprinchorn cites neither this important volume, nor any of the meticulously researched and compelling biographical, book-historical, and theaterhistorical findings by scholars such as Anette Storli Andersen, Ståle