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.
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
Biography
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.
