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Distributed for Museum Tusculanum Press

The Heibergs and the Theater

Between Vaudeville, Romantic Comedy and National Drama

Johan Ludvig Heiberg was one of the most famous playwrights, theater critics, and essayists of the Danish Golden Age, and his wife, Johanne Luise Heiberg, was one of its greatest actresses. This first book-length study in English examines the many ways they dominated theatrical life during the period. In these essays, the contributors explore the deep connections between the Heibergs’ far-reaching philosophical and political interests and their theatrical careers. More than just a study of Golden Age theater, this book offers an important look into the ideas and arts that constituted one of the richest eras in modern history.


269 pages | 10 halftones | 5 1/2 x 9 | © 2012

Danish Golden Age Studies

History: European History

Literature and Literary Criticism: Dramatic Works


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Table of Contents

List of Contributors
Acknowledgements

Introduction: The Heibergs and the Theater
      Jon Stewart and Klaus Müller-Wille
Johan Ludvig Heiberg and the Theater: In Oehlenschläger’s Limelight
      Finn Hauberg Mortensen
I. Theater and Politics
An Artist Among Rebels? Johan Ludvig Heiberg and the Political Turn of the Public Sphere
      Lasse Horne Kjældgaard
Ghostly Monarchies—Paradoxical Constitutions of the Political in Johan Ludvig Heiberg’s Royal Dramas
      Klaus Müller-Wille
The Danish Way to Fame and Power? Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Thorvaldsen and the Popularity of Art
      Wolfgang Behschnitt
II. Theater and Philosophy
The Opera Hater? Johan Ludvig Heiberg and the Musical Theater
      Joachim Grage
Heiberg’s Conception of Speculative Drama and the Crisis of the Age: Martensen’s Analysis of Fata Morgana
      Jon Stewart
Kierkegaard’s Hidden Satire on Heiberg’s Poetics of the Vaudeville in Either/Or and Repetition
      Mads Sohl Jessen
III. Theater and the Economy of Gender
Nina’s Madness: The Economy of Sentimentality in Heiberg’s Nina
      Gunilla Hermansson
Theater and Modernity: Thomasine Gyllembourg’s Novella Near and Far
      Joachim Schiedermair
The Ethics of Performance in Johanne Luise Heiberg’s Autobiographical Reflections
      Karin Sanders

Index of Persons
Index of Subjects

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