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Ibsen's Cycle as Tragedy
by Brian Johnston

1. The Inutility of Tragedy

2. The Realist Cycle as an Archetype-filled Tragic Space

3. The Conditions for the Game of Modern Tragedy

4. The Comfortless Zone of Tragedy

5. Ibsen's Invented Norway: a Metaphoric Stage Space

6. Creating the Dimensions of a Modern Tragic Drama

7. The Modern World as a Defective Work of Art; The Theme of Alienation

8. Addressing the Scale of Modern Alienation; Archetypal Recollection

9. A Schematic: Dimensions of Reality

IX. A Schematic: Dimensions of Reality

Like Peer Gynt's onion, the dimensions of reality and conflict encompassed by an adequate tragic art can be set out in multiple layers, peeling "right to the centre."[28]

     Supernatural/metaphysical
          Natural world
              Historical/cultural forces
                   National identity
                         Social interactions: local time and place
                                  Generational conflicts
                                          Familial loyalties/conflicts
                                                 Male/female identities
                                                      Individual ego/libido
                                                           Unconscious realm

Not every tragedy will reveal all these dimensions - but the greatest generally do, trying to activate all layers in its single action. So integrated are all these layers that, like a spider's web (to change the metaphor), the shaking of any one strand causes the convulsion of the whole. Slice of life realism usually keeps to the "lower" levels of action; abstract allegory to the "upper." Of course, this is not a test to apply to plays, but rather only an aid to help detect the possible dimensions of the tragic art.

Carnegie Mellon University

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28. Ibsen, Peer Gynt: A Dramatic Poem, in The Oxford Ibsen, English version by Christopher Fry based on a literal translation by Johan Fillinger (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), 3.396-97.