Women's Writing

Joanna Baillie and the Romantic Experiment

Joanna Baillie Special Issue for Women’s Writing

Guest Editors: Renee Harris and Diane Piccitto

Joanna Baillie and the Romantic Experiment

In this special issue, we examine Joanna Baillie’s contribution to the experimental spirit of Romanticism through her drama, poetry, and prose. We invite considerations of her magnum opus, Plays on the Passions (1798-1812), as a defining moment in the Romantic period, coinciding as it does with that other watershed event the publication of Lyrical Ballads and produced against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, following the optimism of the French Revolution and subsequent horror and disillusionment. A declaration of experimental intent and dramatic theory, Baillie’s “Introductory Discourse” does for theatre what Wordsworth’s Preface does for poetry, affirming it as the pinnacle of human achievement. She hails the power of “sympathetick curiosity” in all of us, which is more curiosity than sympathy. Baillie declares, “[I]n examining others we know ourselves,” positioning drama as a locus of desire (to look) and pleasure (of seeing) and of examination (the analysis of self and other) and enlightenment (the formation of the self). Additionally, we welcome considerations of Baillie’s Miscellaneous Plays (1836), especially her dramatic contributions to the gothic, her Scottish plays, as well as her musical dramas. Baillie engages the same Romantic curiosity in her Poems (1790) and Metrical Legends (1821), as she attempts to accurately portray the manifestation of inherent personality traits in the actions and words of scorned lovers, terror-filled villagers, and exalted historical heroes. This issue aims to assess Baillie’s works, their significance on the Romantic era’s many historical and literary fronts and their engagement with emotions and understanding.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

• Impact on Romanticism
• Dramatic performance and theatre
• Poetry
• Audience(s)
• Dramatic genre (e.g., tragedy, comedy, gothic drama, domestic comedy, closet drama)
• Gender and sexuality, including queer expressions and orientations
• Science, medicine, psychology
• Affect and emotion
• Revolution and/or war
• Afterlives