골방연극, 모방, 혼종성: 마가렛 카벤디쉬의 『쾌락의 수녀원』과 성의 정치 (Closet Drama, Mimicry, Hybridity: Gender Politics in Margaret Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국고전중세르네상스영문학회
· 수록지 정보 : 중세르네상스영문학 / 23권 / 2호 / 49 ~ 74페이지
· 저자명 : 김태원

초록

Margaret Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure was presumably written during her banishment, though having been published in 1668, so that many scholars tend to see it as a closet drama. As one of the favorite genres for women playwrights in early modern England, the genre of closet drama offered them with a unique venue for self-expression and critical engagement with the social order of patriarchy. When the heroine of Cavendish’s play decides to lock herself and her female companions into a convent, it becomes apparent that the closet goes beyond the simple setting of dramatic action and rather enables the playwright to introduce a flurry of thematic, generic, social implications into the dramatic representation of female seclusion. And the way in which Cavendish employs the genre of closet drama, I argue, is deeply entangled with how she precariously positioned herself as a Royalist woman writer during the interregnum period and beyond, and how she steers her drama between conflicting forces. While assuming the form of closet drama, The Convent of Pleasure constantly invokes Shakespeare and his oeuvres as the major source of imagination and thus, with the borrowed authority, establishes her as a serious playwright. But at the same time, her unique way of mimicry and hybridization seems to fragment Shakespeare’s forms and images and thereby paves way for the presentation of herself as an authentic, genuine writer. In order to explain the ways in which Cavendish engages with Shakespeare’s authority and takes advantage of the inherited theatrical forms, this essay introduces Homi Bhabha’s concepts of mimicry and hybridity. Drawing upon the Bhabha’s concepts in reading her dramatic strategies, I attempt to investigate the crisscross of closet drama and public theatre in the play, as well as the authorial engagement with the patriarchal and heteronormative order, in envisioning and representing the obverse side of the contemporary social structure.

영어초록

Margaret Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure was presumably written during her banishment, though having been published in 1668, so that many scholars tend to see it as a closet drama. As one of the favorite genres for women playwrights in early modern England, the genre of closet drama offered them with a unique venue for self-expression and critical engagement with the social order of patriarchy. When the heroine of Cavendish’s play decides to lock herself and her female companions into a convent, it becomes apparent that the closet goes beyond the simple setting of dramatic action and rather enables the playwright to introduce a flurry of thematic, generic, social implications into the dramatic representation of female seclusion. And the way in which Cavendish employs the genre of closet drama, I argue, is deeply entangled with how she precariously positioned herself as a Royalist woman writer during the interregnum period and beyond, and how she steers her drama between conflicting forces. While assuming the form of closet drama, The Convent of Pleasure constantly invokes Shakespeare and his oeuvres as the major source of imagination and thus, with the borrowed authority, establishes her as a serious playwright. But at the same time, her unique way of mimicry and hybridization seems to fragment Shakespeare’s forms and images and thereby paves way for the presentation of herself as an authentic, genuine writer. In order to explain the ways in which Cavendish engages with Shakespeare’s authority and takes advantage of the inherited theatrical forms, this essay introduces Homi Bhabha’s concepts of mimicry and hybridity. Drawing upon the Bhabha’s concepts in reading her dramatic strategies, I attempt to investigate the crisscross of closet drama and public theatre in the play, as well as the authorial engagement with the patriarchal and heteronormative order, in envisioning and representing the obverse side of the contemporary social structure.

참고자료

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