Architectural Involutions

Taking the reader on an inward journey from façades to closets, from physical topsychic space, this book offers an alternative genealogy of theater byrevealing how innovations in architectural writing and practice transformed an earlymodern sense of interiority. As the English house underwent a process of inwardfolding, replacing a logic of central assembly with one of dissemination, the subjectwho negotiated this new scenography became a flashpoint of conflict in both domes-tic and theatrical arenas. The book launches from a matrix of related “platforms” - a term that in early modern usage denoted scaffolds, stages, and draftsmen’s sketches - to situate Alberti, Shakespeare, Jonson, and others within a landscape of spatial andvisual change. Engaging theory with archival findings, Mimi Yiu reveals an emergentdesire to perform subjectivity, to unfold an interior face to an admiring public.