Closet Drama: History, Theory, Form

by Catherine Burroughs (Editor)

Overview

Closet Drama: History, Theory, Form introduces the emerging field of Closet Drama Studies by featuring twelve original essays from distinguished scholars who offer fresh and illuminating perspectives on closet drama as a genre. Examining an unusual mix of historical narratives, performances, and texts from the Renaissance to the present, this collection unleashes a provocative array of theoretical concerns about the phenomenon of the closet play—a dramatic text written for reading rather than acting.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367733506
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/18/2020
Series:	Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies
Pages:	290
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Catherine Burroughs is Professor of English at Wells College and Visiting Professor of English and the Performing Arts and Media Studies Department at Cornell University. A member of Actors’ Equity Association, she is also a novelist.

Table of Contents

I. CLOSET DRAMA AND STAGINGS OF HISTORY

CHAPTER ONE: Introduction: "Closet Drama Studies"
Catherine Burroughs

CHAPTER TWO: The baroque closet: sovereignty and the "home theater" of Cervantes
Philip Lorenz

CHAPTER THREE: Inverted catharsis in Milton’s Samson Agonistes
Brendan Prawzdik

CHAPTER FOUR: "Appalling tabernacle of self and unbelief": Wyndham Lewis’s Enemy of the Stars
Allan Pero

II. GENDER, SEXUAL POLITICS, AND THE CLOSET

CHAPTER FIVE: Horror and terror, gender and fear in Joanna Baillie’s Orra
Lilla Crisafulli

CHAPTER SIX: Restoration in the closet: Felicia Hemans’ drama in the Napoleonic aftermath
Diego Saglia

CHAPTER SEVEN: Michael Field's Stephania: the closet drama as a space for female fortitude and artistic agency
Michelle S. Lee

III. CLOSET DRAMA AND GENRE

CHAPTER EIGHT: "Closeted" discourses in private theatricals: the mystification of genre and audience in Christian Carstairs’ The Hubble-Shue
Gioia Angeletti

CHAPTER NINE: Scarred phonation and the act of listening in Byron's Marino Faliero
Elizabeth Effinger

CHAPTER TEN: "Crazier than a fish with titties": the hybridity of closet drama in R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet
Fredric V. Bogel

IV: FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR CLOSET DRAMA STUDIES

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Closet television, queer Hooperman
Nick Salvato

CHAPTER TWELVE: Theatrical performance in the margins: imagined theatres on page and stage
Daniel Sack

Appendix: uncloseting Jonas Barish’s book on closet drama
Catherine Burroughs