Sample Abstracts

and below are some sample abstracts (mine) 

This first abstract was submitted for a conference titled "What Signifies a Theatre?"  and the premise of the cfp (which I couldn't find, but wanted to summarize for you so you can see how I am trying to incorporate cfp language into my abstract) was to think about private theatricals and alternate theatrical experiences in the long eighteenth century (the conference title is taken from a Mansfield Park quotation re: private theatricals).

I'm trying below to give the organizers a sense of my topic and why it would be interesting to them; clearly, I hadn't at that point written the paper, but I'm trying to sketch out my plan of action.

"Sarah Siddons Offstage"

Sarah Siddons was best known in the eighteenth century for her commanding theatrical performances, yet she remained in the public eye for some time after her retirement from the stage.  Though she officially left the theater in 1812, with a performance of Lady Macbeth, she continued to appear onstage sporadically in command and benefit performances until 1819.  Starting in 1813, she also entertained audiences with public readings from Shakespeare at the Argyll Rooms, a privately owned venue on Little Argyll Street. 

This paper will focus on these under-analyzed staged readings.  Praise for Siddons in this context—at a time when she was starting to receive criticism for her acting onstage—contains fascinating observations about theatrical spaces, acting, and Siddons at the end of her career.  Take, for example, Joanna Baillie’s assertion that what Siddons does in this venue is “acting…rather than reading” and that she would rather see such a performance “once than go to three plays in a large Theatre where [Siddons] acted.”   Why did audiences come to prefer seeing Siddons in these public rooms? How do the unique requirements of the staged reading—that Siddons speak all the parts, that she stand much closer to her audience and under different lighting, that she abandon specific costume changes and rely merely on vocal intonation to convey character—shift the audience experience of theater?  In asking such questions, this paper will examine ideas about performance, characterization, and audience engagement surrounding early nineteenth-century drama.

And then this was an abstract I sent out in grad school; I am including the cover email I sent, too.  (Today, I'd probably make that email even a touch shorter.)  The MLA call has asked for abstracts btw. 250-500 words, so this one is a bit longer.  For our class abstracts,

I'm asking you to work within 250 words.

Dear Professor X,

Below you will find my abstract for the MLA panel on “New Directions in Drama, 1660-1740.”

As an advanced graduate student in English at Yale University, I am working with Professors Jill Campbell and Joseph Roach on a dissertation titled “Unspeakable Passions: Female Self-Expression in Eighteenth-Century Narrative and Performance.”  My work examines the way eighteenth-century female authors (specifically, Eliza Haywood, Frances Burney, Elizabeth Inchbald, and Maria Edgeworth) present performance as enabling female expression.   The authors in question all worked as both novelists and playwrights; therefore, I examine how they treat and understand eighteenth-century theatrical performance and stage mechanics, how they describe and implement theatrical performance in their novels, and how they stage examples of less literal, societal performance in both genres.

I appreciate your time and consideration, and I would be happy to provide any additional information if so desired.

            Best,

            Emily Hodgson Anderson

                        (e.anderson@yale.edu)

 Emily Hodgson Anderson

(e.anderson@yale.edu)

“A Dangerous Woman-Poet Wrote the Play”:

The Implications of Eliza Haywood’s Theatrical Career

While Eliza Haywood has been the subject of recent critical attention, most of it has been directed at either her early amorous fiction or later didactic novels.  Yet Haywood’s career as a novelist developed from within another, theatrical career; she acted intermittently from 1715 until 1737, wrote three plays and collaborated with William Hatchett on a fourth. Haywood’s extensive involvement in the theatrical community during the early part of the eighteenth century suggests that, had it not been for the Licensing Act of 1737, she would have continued to write for the stage. And an examination of Haywood’s dramatic work reveals the many ways in which her non-dramatic fiction is informed by her career as an actress and a playwright: in this paper, I provide a specific example of my methodology. I examine the ways in which  her 1723 comedy A Wife to be Lett stages problems of female expression and shows heroines solving these problems by engaging in various forms of premeditated performance.  I conclude by showing how the conflict and means of resolution presented in her early play reappear in her later novels.

In A Wife to be Lett, the mercenary and probably impotent Mr. Graspall agrees to let rakish Sir Harry Beaumont sleep with his wife for the bargain price of 2000 pounds; Mrs. Graspall, bound by Covert-Baron, can seemingly do or say little to affect his decision. Yet in a meta-theatrical moment at the end of the play, Mrs. Graspall stages a scene that ultimately enables her to reveal Mr. Graspall’s plan and subjects her husband to the criticism of his dinner guests.  Analysis of this scene reveals how Mrs. Graspall acts as both playwright and performer to articulate her objections and vindicate herself. I then discuss how Mrs. Graspall’s strategy of premeditated performance is repeated and applied by heroines such as Haywood’s rambunctious Fantomina, her much later Miss Betsy Thoughtless, and even, to a certain degree, by Haywood herself (who experienced an unfortunate marriage, lived apart from her husband, and who both created and performed the part of Mrs. Graspall not long after her separation supposedly occurred). 

This paper contributes to the conversation surrounding Haywood; any questions of performance in her non-dramatic texts (and there are many) need to be considered in light of her experience with eighteenth-century theater, as established by her work as playwright and her own performances onstage.  More broadly and more importantly, this paper examines an interplay between genres that has been overlooked for much too long. Haywood is only one of many eighteenth-century authors who worked as both a novelist and a playwright, yet until now most eighteenth-century criticism has taken an either / or approach, examining either the plays, or the novels of the author in question.  This paper represents a specific example of how and why a study of eighteenth-century drama must be included in any discussion of the eighteenth-century novel.