Book contents
- World-Making Renaissance Women
- World-Making Renaissance Women
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction The Literary Contours of Women’s World-Making
- Part I Early Modern Women Framing the Modern World
- Part II Remaking the Literary World
- Chapter 5 Uncloseted: Geography and Early Modern Women’s Dramatic Writing
- Chapter 6 Lucy Hutchinson’s Memoirs as Autobiography
- Chapter 7 Commonplace Genres, or Women’s Interventions in Non-Traditional Literary Forms: Madame de Sablé, Aphra Behn, and the Maxim
- Chapter 8 Form, Formalism, and Literary Studies: The Case of Margaret Cavendish
- Part III Connecting the Social Worlds of Religion, Politics, and Philosophy
- Part IV Rethinking Early Modern Types and Stereotypes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 5 - Uncloseted: Geography and Early Modern Women’s Dramatic Writing
from Part II - Remaking the Literary World
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 November 2021
- World-Making Renaissance Women
- World-Making Renaissance Women
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction The Literary Contours of Women’s World-Making
- Part I Early Modern Women Framing the Modern World
- Part II Remaking the Literary World
- Chapter 5 Uncloseted: Geography and Early Modern Women’s Dramatic Writing
- Chapter 6 Lucy Hutchinson’s Memoirs as Autobiography
- Chapter 7 Commonplace Genres, or Women’s Interventions in Non-Traditional Literary Forms: Madame de Sablé, Aphra Behn, and the Maxim
- Chapter 8 Form, Formalism, and Literary Studies: The Case of Margaret Cavendish
- Part III Connecting the Social Worlds of Religion, Politics, and Philosophy
- Part IV Rethinking Early Modern Types and Stereotypes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Plays written by early modern Englishwomen have, for too long, been imprisoned conceptually within the small, domestic space of closet drama: from T.S. Eliot’s categorization of Mary Sidney and her circle as “shy recluses” whose dramatic endeavors were “bound to fail,” to present-day performances of the texts, all too often set in academic halls and darkened auditoria, the theatrical writing of early modern women has been reductively framed. This chapter questions such assumptions and explores how these women dramatists engaged with a more expansive understanding of space. The argument here, therefore, focuses upon the evocation of multiple geographical settings to appreciate their radical interventions across an array of social and political discourses.
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- World-Making Renaissance WomenRethinking Early Modern Women's Place in Literature and Culture, pp. 89 - 105Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021