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.
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.
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 OrraLilla 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 ClosetFredric 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