Iconoclasts

Iconoclasts is James Huneker's sharp, passionate survey of the dramatists who shattered theatrical convention and remade the modern stage. Drawing together studies of Ibsen, Strindberg, Shaw, Maeterlinck, Hauptmann, Gorky, Sudermann, and others, it treats these playwrights as daring innovators whose work probes individuality, rebellion, morality, and the hidden pressures shaping human life. Huneker opens with Henrik Ibsen as "The Individualist," tracing his early development from youthful poems and historical-political dramas like Catiline to the mature force of Fru Inger of Ostraat and The Pretenders, where ambition, conflict, and psychological complexity fully emerge. He then turns to Hauptmann's The Sunken Bell and Rose Bernd, admiring their fusion of symbolism, realism, and moral intensity in stories of temptation, social judgment, and ruin. Maeterlinck receives especially rich attention: Aglavaine and Sélysette, Sister Beatrice, Ardiane and Barbe Bleu, The Miracle of Saint Antony, Monna Vanna, and Joyzelle reveal his range from delicate symbolism and legend to tense psychological drama and mystical romance. Throughout, Huneker's criticism is vivid, opinionated, and alert to the living power of great drama. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.