Aurélie Griffin - Böcker

The Lives and Afterlives of the Sidney Women Writers charts the multifarious connections between the lives and works of Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke (1561-1621), and Mary Sidney, Lady Wroth (1587-1651). Bringing together essays by renowned experts on the Sidney women and a new generation of scholars, the collection shows how the Sidney women did not so much write about their lives as they lived their lives through their texts, and continue to do so in contemporary reinventions of their lives and works. Engaging with contexts of place, race, literary traditions and aesthetics, including two new creative biofictional accounts, the essays offer dynamic, mutually illuminating perspectives, showing how literary texts and biography enlighten and complicate each other for mutual enrichment. The book’s specific illustrations of fluidity and porousness between the Sidney women’s lives and works offer precise, tailor-made interpretations of the varied circumstances which produced the Sidney women writers.

A collection of critical scholarship on early modern closet plays performed in private non-playhouse settings between 1560 and 1670. Capturing a lively period of performance, this volume covers textual history, women's writing and contemporary staging. Scholars highlight the radical choices made by playwrights who were actively seeking to create a new theatre, distinct from the characteristics of the public stage. Studying a wide array of plays from 1560 to 1670, the book interrogates the role of women writers in the development of closet drama, early modern racialisation, translation and the circulation of particular motifs across the Channel. It pays close attention to Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam as a proto-feminist play that has become increasingly popular with teachers and directors. Contemporary performances of early modern closet plays such as Cleopatra, The Tragedy of Mariam, and Love’s Victory are discussed through interviews with scholars involved in performance revivals. By offering an extensive and detailed exploration of closet drama readers are invited to rethink early modern theatre as a whole by looking beyond the public-private divide.