Corrupted Nonhumans. An Ecocritical Reading of Ibsen’s The Wild Duck, The Lady From the Sea and When We Dead Awaken.

The aim of my paper is to propose an eco-critical reading of three plays by Henrik Ibsen: Vildanden, (1884 The Wild Duck), Fruen fra havet (1888, The Lady from the Sea) and Når vi døde vågner (1899, When We Dead Awaken). Through an anthropocentric and a more than anthropocentric reading, the analysis focuses on non-human characters in the three plays. With the help of Ecolinguistics, which allows for a deeper understanding of transitivity processes by identifying actors, affected and sensers in the play, the analysis is also able to explore their literary presence by distinguishing between animals as literary tools (symbols and mataphors) and actual animals. From the first play analysed, it is possible to notice a crescendo in the presence and centrality of the non-human characters, that from a state of captivity in The Wild Duck pass through a stable presence in The Lady From the Sea until they become a determining and final element in When We Dead Awaken. The dialogue between the three plays allows us to identify a tendency to imprison non-humans in the text as tools for animalising the human characters, usually with negative connotations, confirming anthropocentrism as an overwhelming presence. Despite this anthropocentric predominance, the attempt in the plays is to leave space for natural elements for what they are, starting from the question: can literature be a place of liberation for non-humans?