Ethical Narrative Of Ibsen’s Later Plays

Ibsen,a world-renowned playwright and poet,creates 25 plays in his whole life.Among them,eight later plays led by "The Duck" emerge new changes in the creative and artistic skills,which pay more attention to the use of symbol,and mark a new development stage in Ibsen’s exploration of drama.At the same time,he shows no sign of lessening his focus on the ethical issues of human being and highlights the ethical narrative,which has changed profoundly compared to the early and mid plays.The thesis,choosing Ibsen’s eight later plays as the main research object,would try to discuss all kinds of questions about ethical narrative through the method of close reading,ethical literary criticism,Bakhtin’s theory of dialogue.There are three parts in the thesis including introduction,the main body and conclusion.In the first part,the author presents the issue of ethical narrative in Ibsen’s later plays and gives an overall explanation of research status,research methods,research innovations and related concepts.There are four chapters in the second part of the main body.From the perspective of the family ethical narrative,the author summarizes and interprets ethical issues of parent-child ethical conflicts,ethical questions between male and female in love and marriage,deviation of lifestyle between husband and wife respectively in the first chapter,and all of them coexist in the eight later plays.Following the first chapter on the content and logic immediately,the author in the second chapter illustrates ethical issues in the scope of social life,including vulnerable social ideal,ethical dilemma played and manipulated by authority and individuals’ ethical dilemmas between their spiritual pursuit in art and painful life experiences,and these three ethical issues intertwined together.The first chapter of ethical issues in family level and the second chapter interact as cause-effect relationship to promote the ethical narration.In the third chapter,the author discusses the outlet of ethical issues,based on the philosophies of "all or nothing" and "on high" which demonstrate Ibsen’s ethical thoughts.The subjects of the discussions are individuals or both genders in the ethical dilemma,and they are dying or living together in the end of discussions,which are typical of Ibsen’s ethical selection.In the fourth chapter,the author explores ethical narrative context on a macro level.The dialogue contexts composed by ethical space-time,ethical carnival and polyphony are important aspects of ethical narrative in Ibsen’s later plays,which have a result of making the ethical narrative more openness and more diversity,and enriching the connotation of ethics and philosophical implications greatly.The third part is the conclusion part,through the analysis of the causes of ethical narration focused in Ibsen’s later plays as well as dialectical relationship between ethical narrative and Ibsenism,we can take a new look at "the essence of Ibsenism".In the later plays,Ibsen expects the individual’s ultimate appeal to ethical freedom to express his perception and contemplation for human nature and his concern and pursuit for the existence of human future.