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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 839.8226
EAN num: 9780192837462
ISBN number: 019283746X
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 192
Printing Date: March 18, 1999
Publishing house: Oxford University Press, USA
Sale Popularity Level: 904807
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Peer Gynt was Ibsen's last work to use poetry as a medium of dramatic expression, and the poetry is brilliantly appropriate to the imaginative swings between Scandinavian oral folk traditions, the Morrocan coast, the Sahara Desert, and the absurdist images of the Cairo madhouse. This translation is taken from the acclaimed Oxford Ibsen. John McFarlane is Emeritus Professor of European Literature at the University of East Anglia, and General Editor of the Oxford Ibsen.
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Rated by buyers 
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Peer Gynt is a piece of literature that, like Goethe's Faust Part II plays best on the stage of the imagination. It is too lengthy and costly to be performed on stage. Sometimes the very first three acts are performed together, sometimes the last two acts are brought together to become a whole for a theatre production.
In terms of reading, this is a great fable piece. Peer is the Trickster with the mirror to his conscience. As a youth, he is Troll-like in his lusts, in his carousing. In his middle-age, he is Troll-like in his financial enterprises. At the end of his life, he is a folorn man, having given up possible true love to run around in search of his self. He is a fraud but we feel sympathy for him. He pursues life in search of distractions and power but ends up empty at the end, soon to be the vicim of the Button Moulder, soon to be nothing more than a button.
This work has many levels and open to numerous interpretations. Ideally, this is the book you read for a book club. There is nothing conventional about it. The conversations will be endless and the philosophy inspired, well, might be inspiring.
Rated by buyers 
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Peer Gynt is a sort of folk tale character who we see go from being a young man to an old man and who gets in several different adventures. The play doesn't have much of a plot exactly. It starts of in a Norwegian village where Peer is a buffoonish character. He leaves the village, meets up with Trolls, gets in a shipwreck, wanders around the desert, and runs into the button moulder. All of this just happens, disconnectedly. He spends time in America also, but we aren't shown that.
There is a lot of talk about being your self, being authentic, etc. If the play has a theme, I am guessing that's it.
It's completely different from Ibsen's realistic works like An Enemy of the People or The Wild Duck. I'm more a fan of those works. Peer Gynt didn't really speak to me.
On a side note, in the movie Educating Rita, with Michael Caine, Rita takes a test where one of the questions was 'What are some of the difficulties in staging Peer Gynt?' A: It's long. It's not in prose. It has trolls and other fantastical creatures. It has a huge cast many of whom are only on stage very briefly. The main character goes from being a youth to a very old man. The settings vary from a Norwegian village to Egypt and the Sphinx. This is why it's rarely done on stage.
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This is the very first version of the play. Beautiful writing, incredible fluidity of speech. A must have between Peter Pan and Samuel Beckett.
Rated by buyers 
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Few works of literature have inspired classical music that has broke into the popular press. One of these is Ibsen's Peer Gynt. Written in the late 19th century, Edvard Grieg wrote two Suites of music for the stageplay version of this Scandinavian classic a decade later. This poem / stageplay is actually a short novel, and tells the story of Peer Gynt, the ultimate ingrate of a son. Growing up raised by a single mother, he is the terror of his village, bullying younger ones and annoying older ones. Eventually he leaves his village and encounters a series of creatures and adventures bound to rattle anyone's cage. One memorable moment is when he finds himself in the Hall of the Mountain King, who happens to be a troll. This is the scene whose song of the same name by Grieg is a classic TV commercial tune. Life soon turns the young Peer into an older Peer. Near the end he reflects on his life with some characters he encounters. At this he realizes the waste his life has been. The moral of the story: don't waste your youth or any other moment of your life causing trouble for yourself or anyone else, for in the end you only isolate yourself and make life miserable for both you and those around you.
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He writes like a comedian, waving his fist at your face, all while enthronging you to read on!
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