Chinese Ibsenism : Reinventions of Women, Class and Nation

This book is a study of the relation between theatre art and ideology in the Chinese experimentations with new selfhood as a result of Ibsen’s impact. He has held teaching, research and administrative positions in various institutions, including the East-West Center, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Open University of Hong Kong.

This book is a study of the relation between theatre art and ideology in the Chinese experimentations with new selfhood as a result of Ibsen’s impact.  It also explores Ibsenian notions of self, women and gender in China and provides an illuminating study of Chinese theatre as a public sphere in the dissemination of radical ideas. Ibsen is the major source of modern Chinese selfhood which carries notions of personal and social liberation and has exerted great impacts on Chinese revolutions since the beginning of the twentieth century. Ibsen’s idea of the self as an individual has led to various experimentations in theatre, film and fiction to project new notions of selfhood, in particular women’s selfhood, throughout the history of modern China. Even today, China is experimenting with Ibsen’s notions of gender, power, individualism and self.