The Relationship Of Setting And Idea In Peer Gynt

Abstract

OF IBSEN'S TWO MOST FAMOUS verse plays, Brand and Peer Gynt, the first often has been admired for its use of setting to reinforce idea. In Act I on the mountain plateau, the aspiring but untested Brand haughtily dismisses classes of objection to his call. In Acts II-IV, he descends into the dark valley of unenlightened men for the articulation, development, and testing of his call. In Act V, when his ethical imperative demands that he reject the compromise of the valley, he ascends out of the valley on the difficult path to the ice church with his followers. Rejected by them, he pursues his call onward and upward, alone but for the mad Gerd, to discover on the heights that will triumphant must yet aspire to love. The relationship of setting to idea in Peer Gynt, however, is not as clear cut in its main outline, chiefly because Peer travels the whole western world during his lifetime. Nevertheless, the three-fold division of the setting, like that in Brand is relevant to the developing idea of the play, and, within this division, Ibsen clearly relates setting to idea.