This is a three-part discussion series that meets Tuesdays, 7:00-8:30 pm on February 4, 11, and 18

George Bernard Shaw wrote of Henrik Ibsen “the most effective way of shutting our minds against a great man’s ideas is take them for granted.” Not to do that will be our first aim as for three weeks, taking a new play at each meeting, we attempt to grapple with Ibsen’s ideas as they speak to us today.

Each play falls into a different stage of Ibsen’s career. Of A Doll’s House (1879), widely deemed In Ibsen’s first unqualified success, the writer and critic Edmund Gosse writes, “the paradox of life is presented without the least shuffling or evasion.” Hedda Gabler (1890) belongs to what Gosse calls Ibsen’s skeptical stage. In response to critics, Ibsen denied he had written a problem play; rather, he said, he intended to “paint human beings . . . against the background of some of the conditions and laws of society as it exists today.” The Master Builder (1892) marks the start of the last stage of Ibsen’s career. Scholar Charles R. Lyons considers it “the most successful realization of Ibsen’s basic drama.”

Please join us for this Big Books discussion series under the guidance of Joseph Alulis, a faculty member of North Park University. Dr. Alulis also teaches for the University of Chicago’s Basic Program of Liberal Education. 

Registration is required by February 3. Glencoe residents will have priority. Sponsored by the Friends of the Glencoe Public Library.

This is a three-part discussion series that meets Tuesdays, 7:00-8:30 pm on February 4, 11, and 18

George Bernard Shaw wrote of Henrik Ibsen “the most effective way of shutting our minds against a great man’s ideas is take them for granted.” Not to do that will be our first aim as for three weeks, taking a new play at each meeting, we attempt to grapple with Ibsen’s ideas as they speak to us today.

Each play falls into a different stage of Ibsen’s career. Of A Doll’s House (1879), widely deemed In Ibsen’s first unqualified success, the writer and critic Edmund Gosse writes, “the paradox of life is presented without the least shuffling or evasion.” Hedda Gabler (1890) belongs to what Gosse calls Ibsen’s skeptical stage. In response to critics, Ibsen denied he had written a problem play; rather, he said, he intended to “paint human beings . . . against the background of some of the conditions and laws of society as it exists today.” The Master Builder (1892) marks the start of the last stage of Ibsen’s career. Scholar Charles R. Lyons considers it “the most successful realization of Ibsen’s basic drama.”

Please join us for this Big Books discussion series under the guidance of Joseph Alulis, a faculty member of North Park University. Dr. Alulis also teaches for the University of Chicago’s Basic Program of Liberal Education. 

Registration is required by February 3. Glencoe residents will have priority. Sponsored by the Friends of the Glencoe Public Library.

This is a three-part discussion series that meets Tuesdays, 7:00-8:30 pm on February 4, 11, and 18

George Bernard Shaw wrote of Henrik Ibsen “the most effective way of shutting our minds against a great man’s ideas is take them for granted.” Not to do that will be our first aim as for three weeks, taking a new play at each meeting, we attempt to grapple with Ibsen’s ideas as they speak to us today.

Each play falls into a different stage of Ibsen’s career. Of A Doll’s House (1879), widely deemed In Ibsen’s first unqualified success, the writer and critic Edmund Gosse writes, “the paradox of life is presented without the least shuffling or evasion.” Hedda Gabler (1890) belongs to what Gosse calls Ibsen’s skeptical stage. In response to critics, Ibsen denied he had written a problem play; rather, he said, he intended to “paint human beings . . . against the background of some of the conditions and laws of society as it exists today.” The Master Builder (1892) marks the start of the last stage of Ibsen’s career. Scholar Charles R. Lyons considers it “the most successful realization of Ibsen’s basic drama.”

Please join us for this Big Books discussion series under the guidance of Joseph Alulis, a faculty member of North Park University. Dr. Alulis also teaches for the University of Chicago’s Basic Program of Liberal Education. 

Registration is required by February 3. Glencoe residents will have priority. Sponsored by the Friends of the Glencoe Public Library.