A question of method

Ibsen's reception in Germany

David R. George

pp. 55-79

in: Ian Donaldson (ed), Transformations in modern European drama, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1983

Abstract

"You know my methods in such cases, Watson." Would that we literary sleuths could say the same: the focal issue of this conference and of all such enquiries into international reception remains that of methodology. The comforting confirmation of our expectations achieved by most studies in this field (the Expressionists loved Strindberg, Noh drama first appealed to the Symbolists, Chekhov was rediscovered after the Theatre of the Absurd) should not blind us to the fact that, even if the evidence is detailed, and the convictions assured, the methodology is not much advanced on I. A. Richards's famous judgement of literary theory as a whole: "a few conjectures, a supply of admonitions, many acute isolated observations, some brilliant guesses, much oratory and applied poetics, inexhaustible confusion, a sufficiency of dogma, no small stock of prejudices".[1]