Aphra Behn

literature is about. To some extent, I do agree with this. Now, during this time, there were a plethora of male playwrights, poets, and “lovers.” There were hardly far and few between. This is something I find to be strange seeing as modern day art consumers are more or less women. This alone is the reason I decided to look into a female playwright by the name of Aphra Behn whom I’m sure faced much scrutiny in getting her works penned, read, and published, at least in the same manner than her male counterparts did. Her work The Rover was of particular interest to me and therefore shall be the topic…

In this time there are different theater plays, short-fictions and works like Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and his Sister (1684). It is an epistolary work that has a pioneering value in regard to its dating and content (which faced in politics the Whigs with the Tories). Behn applies a style in the novel preached by Bacon or Hobbes in which an ideology of transparency and clarity prevails in the text. The genre of the epistolary novel has a starting point in Aphra Behn and in the years of the…

Aphra Behn expresses Cloris’s anxieties in an analogous event (her conflicting desire with Lysander’s promise of pleasure and her sense of social status in being chaste) in such a way that the centre of the “spirit” is not the occurrence of the event itself but the state of mind mirrored in it. Of this, therefore, what occurs is this centre of the “spirit” which can be relational, and therefore universal. The Disappointment is then a poem in which the subject-matter is epic, but the treatment is…

Color is Just Skin Deep: Behn, Prejudice, and Contradicting Views of Monarchy Aphra Behn’s royalist sympathies are historically known, so it is to no surprise that the royal titular protagonist of her work, Oroonoko, is a tragic figure meant to evoke sympathy. However, a contradiction seems to emerge with the portrayal of Oroonoko’s grandfather and the current reigning monarch. Oroonoko is, as expected, portrayed in a manner that invokes pity for his plight, but his grandfather is cast as an…

‘Oroonoko’ by Aphra Behn, also known as ‘The Royal Slave’ was published in 1688 by William Canning. It told the story of an african Prince who is tricked into slavery and sold to Colonists in Surinam. Within his journey, he meets the narrator who is telling the story to the reader. As Oroonoko is the story of a slave, that theme is communicated throughout the book. Many say Oroonoko is an anti-slavery novel due to the speech he makes towards his own fellow slaves, but it just is the story about…

a) Behn shows that she is not incapable of appreciating cultures different from her own while disapproving European society and its religion. i) She devotes many paragraphs to descriptions of the natives of Surinam, innocent in their ways yet skilled in war and game. ii) Behn conveniently utilizes these natives, along with Oroonoko's virtues, to joking against European civilization, especially religion. iii) To his death Oroonoko refuses to accept Christianity. This is no surprise since Behn…

Aphra Behn and Frederick Douglas The colonization of the Europeans in America made a huge impact in 1600s when they came to America and founded Jamestown in 1607. With the English now in America, they began to implement their own culture and ideas in a variety of ways. One of these ways included the introduction of slavery as a need for labor; primarily plantation and agricultural labor. Life for African Americans and slaves was not pleasant. They were treated inhumanely, uneducated by…

Aphra Behn Was the Aphra Bomb or (The Underrated Women from Theatre History) By the early 1900’s, women necessary to theatre. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, this hasn’t always been the case. During the Elizabethan era, it was illegal for women to be performers. This was because acting troupes would travel around and would have to sleep in odd places. It was considered inappropriate for women to do this. Because women were banned, the roles of young women were played by prepubescent boys,…

Shakespeare et le genre Aphra Behn was born around 1640 and died in 1689, thus living in a period called the Modern Age when people focused on going back to the roots of Christianism hence considered both religion and social life. The rise of public fear and domestic fear was the result of a huge backlash both social and economical for women. Joan Kelly, a prominent historian who wrote Did women have a Renaissance? tackled the rise of conduct books for women, sermons and local justice as the…

Racism is a common topic in today’s society. There are constant protests and rallies, such as “Black Lives Matter” and the “Take a Knee” protest, regarding racism and rights for African-Americans in the United States, that have become more frequent within the past decade. Also, even though slavery was abolished in the United States, it is still an issue in many countries. Slavery and racism is still an ongoing issue in the world and is ever evolving, but it’s a problem that needs to stop so we…