NOTES ON HENRIK IBSEN SCHOLARSHIP TODAY: POTENTIALS AND CHALLENGES IN COMBINING HISTORIOGRAPHICAL METHODS, DIGITAL HUMANITIES, AND THEATRE/LITERARY STUDIES

This paper explores the potentials and challenges encountered in the recent Henrik Ibsen scholarship emerging from the methodological combination of historiographical methods, digital humanities, and theatre/literary studies. In the first part, the article discusses the methodological intercrossings through examples from the Ibsen field. For this purpose, it takes theatre historiography, theatre/literary studies and digital humanities as different yet interconnected methodological portals to access the Ibsen world. In the second part, the article takes the methodological discussion further, by bringing into light the main four steps generally taken by researchers when working with this methodological combination. In this account, the IbsenStage Database 3 is the most powerful example of a research tool at crossroads between historiography, digital humanities, theatre and literature in the Ibsen field. Finally, the article concludes that the potentials and challenges in combining historiographical methods, digital humanities and theatre/literary studies revealed in the examples demonstrate the inescapable interconnectedness of quantitative and qualitative approaches not only in the Ibsen research, but also in the humanities in general.