(Norway's national anthem is played.) The end of the 19th century is the high point in Norwegian literary history. So sorry to the rest of the world: This episode is just going to be about us! (blows the May 17 whistle.) Welcome to realism! Okay, so you may remember that the period of literature in the early 1800s is called the Romantic period. The books were about feelings, nature, the real and the unique. The poet was a genius with very special abilities. Literature does not arise in a vacuum. It is characterized by the time in which it was created. Throughout the 19th century, Norway and the world changed rapidly. The cities grew. The industry grew. The working class grew. Several participated in the public debate and were given the right to vote. Society simply began to resemble what we have today, with newspapers, railways and education for more people. We got our own written languages that took over from Danish. A modern bourgeoisie and a working class emerged in the cities. They wanted to read about their own urban lives, and less about nature and romance. Now the author was no longer supposed to conjure up literature from his feelings. No, he was supposed to stand with both feet planted in reality, and shine a spotlight on everything that was wrong in society. The author should put problems under debate. Literature would change the world! This is typical of the period we call realism. In Norway, it is the 1870s and 1880s in particular that we associate with realism. Of course, it's not like literature jumped straight from soft romanticism to hard-nosed realism overnight. An example is Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson's peasant story Synnøve Solbakken (1857). In this novel, the transition from national romanticism to realism comes through well. Synnøve is the only child on the farm. She falls in love with Torbjørn Granlien, who is not so rich. Synnøve Solbakken is about love between two young people from different social strata in the 19th century. Eventually, Bjørnson's poetry slips more into critical realism. For example, he publishes the drama En Handske. It is about the double standards of the bourgeoisie. Was it okay for men to have sex before marriage but not women? Was it okay for men to go to prostitutes? Camilla Collett wrote only one novel, The Sheriff's Daughter. There, Collett highlights how young women from the bourgeoisie were "married off" and were not allowed to marry for love. Marriages that were good for the families came before love. This novel had great significance for the women's movement in Norway. Jonas Lie's novel Familien paa Gilje is about much of the same. He criticizes women's oppressed situation, and injustice between the sexes. He shows a society where the family depends on their daughters being well married. Alexander Kielland was born on the sunny side of Stavanger, and he lived right behind me here by Breiavatnet. But in the books he was often on the side of the outsiders. Kielland attacked the falsehood of the rich, he attacked the priests and he addressed the oppression of women. If you are only going to read one book from realism, then read Garman & Worse by Kielland - the best book ever written in Rogaland! Henrik Ibsen is the greatest Norwegian writer of all time. Ibsen is the most played playwright in the world after William Shakespeare. He began writing in the realistic tradition around 1875. Just like Kielland, Ibsen writes about the lying life of the bourgeoisie. Ibsen wrote about adultery, betrayal, prostitution, double standards, venereal diseases, divorce and generational conflicts. Unfortunately, all of this is just as relevant today, which is why you can see Ibsen on theater stages all over the world. Just tonight! A common method with Ibsen is the retrospective technique. This means that an event from the past is brought up and creates the conflict we see on stage, which has a dramatic ending. Ibsen's plays are just as powerful today because we are taken right into the living rooms of ordinary people, - - and look at people who are uncomfortably similar to ourselves. So how did it actually go? Did the authors manage to change the world with the literature they wrote? Follow along!