Abstract

This study reads Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House through Aristotle’s Poetics to ask which features of Aristotelian dramaturgy survive in the play, which are modified, and which no longer fit a nineteenth-century realist context. Although critics have examined the play extensively from feminist, psychological, and sociological perspectives, its relation to Aristotle’s dramatic theory has received less sustained attention. The method combines close textual reading with comparative literary analysis. It considers plot, character, thought, diction, melody, spectacle, and unity of action, together with hamartia, peripeteia, anagnorisis, catharsis, and the tragic protagonist. These categories are treated as historical analytical concepts, not as rules that Ibsen must obey.
The comparison identifies a clear continuity in the causal arrangement of events, the close relation between character and action, and the use of reversal and recognition. Their dramatic purposes, however, have changed. Ibsen places serious conflict inside an ordinary household rather than a heroic public world, and the expected catastrophe gives way to Nora’s unresolved decision to leave. The play thus preserves elements of classical construction while redirecting them toward domestic power, psychological awakening, and social criticism.
The study finds that A Doll’s House neither reproduces Aristotle’s model nor makes it irrelevant. Its plot remains tightly organized, but its protagonist, conflict, and ending belong to modern realism. Aristotle remains useful for explaining how the drama is constructed, provided that formal resemblance is not mistaken for identical meaning. This distinction clarifies both the persistence of classical dramatic techniques and Ibsen’s role in reshaping them for modern theatre.

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