In her 1688 novel, Oroonoko, Aphra Behn introduces her readers to an African prince who is sold into slavery in the Caribbean. Just seven years later, in 1695, Oroonoko was adapted by Thomas Southerne and performed on English stages. Using Behn’s...

Oroonoko, or, The Royal Slave by Aphra Behn is narrated by an unnamed white woman whose life overlaps with Oroonoko’s during his time as a slave in Surinam. When Oroonoko takes the narrator and several other European people to an island she...

Innovation of existing genre norms and conventions is an important fixture in literature from the late-17th through mid-19th centuries. A time characterized by much societal change, as literature grew available to the masses, more women became...

In the 19th century novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe portrays Uncle Tom, a black slave, as an heroic figure. Written shortly before the American Civil War, the novel attempts to change negative moral attitudes towards blacks....

...'twas amazing to imagine where it was he learned so much humanity; or, to give his accomplishments a juster name, where 'twas he got that real greatness of soul, those refined notions of true honour, that absolute generosity, and that softness...

Aphra Behn’s genre-blending tale Oroonoko melds travel narrative with fictional biography to tell the story of Prince Oroonoko, “the royal slave.” Although Behn writes of Oroonoko’s honor as unique among men, her admiration for him seems to derive...

There is something inherently cathartic, inherently exciting about the ‘travel literature’ genre that emerged in the later 17th and early 18th centuries. The lands viewed were never accurately depicted; instead, the author would embellish local...

In her essay, “Origins of the Novel”, Marthe Robert characterises the novel as knowing “neither rule nor restraint. Open to every possibility, its boundaries fluctuate in all directions”. Indeed, both Madame de Lafayette’s The Princess de Cleves...

Aphra Behn and Alexander Pope both present various situations of crisis and uprising in their works, Oroonoko and The Rape of the Lock, respectively. Although the nature and intensity of the crisis situations are very different, both authors use...

The decision to become a female author in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a daunting task in itself, never mind choosing to narrate your work from a female, personal perspective. Such was the case of two famous texts that are read...

Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe leaves home to see the world, only to find himself in a shipwreck, leaving him stranded on a deserted island for years, while Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko is a royal prince turned slave who meets his ultimate demise in the...

Oroonoko was a ground-breaking and revolutionary novella that depicted its African hero in a dignified, even regal, light and is considered to be one of the first works during this time era that showed a compassionate side towards Africans. It is...

In Oroonoko, Aphra Behn presents two very distinct civilizations: Coramantien, an African country ruled by royalty, and Surinam, an English colony in South America that is home to colonists and natives alike. However, Behn’s depictions of these...

“Oroonoko” is a work by the first professional woman writer in English literary history. Aphra Behn, who is also an important innovator in the form of the novel, used a narrative voice that combined proximity to her readers with an unusual wealth...

Aphra Behn was born in the midst of the English Civil War and by the time of her death in 1689, she had seen Charles I executed by his own parliament, the overthrow and restoration of the monarchy with Charles II, and finally the deposition and...

Humans have wrestled with power and morality throughout time, recognizing that the issue is much more elaborate than simply deciding good from evil. Aphra Behn’s narrative Oroonoko: the Royal Slave focuses on the relationship between those in...

'The telling of a story of seduction is also a mode of seduction.' (Ros Ballaster)

In our contemporary world, to 'seduce' or be 'seduced' often has a sexual connotation, of a person persuading another, using various techniques, to engage in a...

Tragedy and romance are two genres that often go hand-in-hand to effectively enhance the qualities of each throughout the text in which they are present. Two texts that we have read this semester, Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko and Voltaire’s Candide, are...

Issues of wealth are addressed as central concerns of the texts The Duchess of Malfi (Webster, 2012) and Oroonoko; Or, The Royal Slave (Behn, 2012). The exploration of character portrayal within different social standings and how the...

Charles-II’s restoration to England’s throne in 1660, marked the theatres’ reopening, earlier closed by the Puritan Government. The middle-class and the poor stopped visiting theatres, owing to its immorality and unaffordability, respectively. The...

In periods of history characterized by male dominance, it was easy to overlook the complex role of women. Often given little explicit agency in major avenues of their lives, such as whether or who to marry, women often forewent their own desires...

In The Rover, Aphra Behn illustrates a world in which sex and economic exchange unite under the mandates of the patriarchy. In such a society, sexuality is commodified, and a woman is either sold into the marriage market (by her family, in an...

Sir Thomas More’s Utopia and Aphra Behn’s The Rover are two vastly different works of literature that focus on different matters: More’s work is a political document, while Behn’s can be categorized as more of a social one. While the two works in...

It is imperative for drama to require much more consideration regarding the intended audience than other literary forms, since in the end, a play is meant to be a performance. In drama and its theatrical depiction, the spectators experience the...