In a letter to August Lindberg dated 22 November 1884, Ibsen emphasizes that he organizes everything according to a spatial vision that takes shape as he writes. However, while space has been widely discussed in relation to Ibsen’s later works, its function in his early drama remains comparatively underexamined. Focusing on Catiline, this study argues that space in Ibsen’s earliest drama is not a neutral backdrop but an embodied and sensory field. In the play, spaces such as the city of Rome, the temple, and the household acquire dramatic force only as they are seen, heard, and felt. The play initially appears to adhere to conventional gendered geographies, associating men with exterior spaces and women with interior ones. But as the play unfolds, it repeatedly unsettles such arrangements through figures with different sensory intensity and prevents space from stabilizing into moral or gendered binaries. Also, situating Ibsen’s treatment of space and gender within the context of nineteenth-century Norway, this seminar explores how Catiline both inherits and challenges prevailing spatial norms.
Yifan Zhang is a PhD candidate at the College of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Fudan University in Shanghai, China. She is currently a guest researcher at the Centre for Ibsen Studies, University of Oslo, funded by the Fudan University Exchange Program Scholarship for Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) Doctoral Students. She is conducting research for her doctoral dissertation, which examines sensory geographies and the performativity of space in Ibsen’s plays.
Please note that this seminar will be streamed. if you wish to participate remotely, please register at this link no later than 11 February. A Zoom link will be sent on the day of the seminar.