...The first chapter examines Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko (1688). This early narrative shows that the forms of character construction traced throughout the book accompany the emergent novel from the outset. The chapter complicates Martha Nussbaum’s accounts of the novel as a means...

...This chapter deals with the two self-conscious writers who were engaged with a variety of literary genres — Katherine Philips and Aphra Behn. It explains that Philips' work shares Cavendish's Royalist politics, and that they have a glancing association with the same Royalist artistic circle...

..., such as Ovid’s Heroides and the medieval Abelard-Héloïse letters. Yet the French Lettres portugaises, first translated in 1678, was probably the most important European precursor to English-language epistolary fiction, inspiring Aphra Behn’s landmark novel, Love-Letters between...

... of theatre. Drawing from feminist cultural materialist theories and historiographies, it analyses the collaboration between the actresses Elizabeth Barry and Anne Bracegirdle and women playwrights such as Aphra Behn and Mary Pix, tracing a line of influence from the time of the first theatres royal...

...This chapter examines the depiction of literacy as a form of colonization in Aphra Behn's Widdow Ranter and Oroonoko. It compares Behn's reflections on empires and on literacy in imperial context with those of Elizabeth Cary and suggests that Behn's vision...

...This chapter describes how classical theology as filtered through the heterodox philosophy of Bernard de Fontenelle sparked the freethinking imagination of Aphra Behn, providing her with an alternative to the gender constraints posed by Restoration libertinism. It examines evidence of Behn's...

.... Analyzing works by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, Aphra Behn, Jonathan Swift, and Alexander Pope, it foregrounds a strand of the English freethinking tradition that was suspicious of revealed religion yet often strongly opposed to the open denigration of Anglican Christianity and its laws. By exposing...

... with alterity. Perhaps no other narrative exemplifies the entwined conditions of experiencing novelty and novel writing than Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (1688). The chapter also investigates how, as novelty's recurring partner, fashion operated as a powerful agent for fictions of eighteenth-century...

.... However, as they craft their identities via racial metaphors and politics, instability, not identity, ultimately prevails. This chapter tracks the evolution of this process across the fictions of Mary Wroth, Margaret Cavendish, Hester Pulter, and Aphra Behn. These writers’ literary engagements...

... stereotypes prophecy Anna Maria van Schurman Aphra Behn Bathsua Makin Katharina Lescailje Abigail Swart Mercy Bruyning Dutch Republic England transnationalism public sphere In recent years, literary critics and historians have become increasingly attuned to the international aspects...

... O’Brien Murrough earl of Inchiquin recipes Coke John letterlocking Weston Richard earl of Portland cryptology cryptography steganography ‘she-intelligencers’ Elizabeth Stuart Sir Thomas Roe Aphra Behn Elisabeth Princess Palatine René Descartes Queen Henrietta Maria Decades...

...The evidence of 18th-century women's literary history shows many different ways of responding to Aphra Behn. This chapter has divided consideration of Behn's effect on her female successors into three sections. The first deals with the 1690s, when the recently deceased Astrea is an inescapable...

...Aphra Behn was a significant influence on 18th-century literature and theatre. As the author of one of the most popular Restoration comedies, she was influential in British theatre, and as the originator of the powerful Oroonoko myth, she had a much wider-reaching impact. In part that impact must...

... Walpole Horace Baker David Erskine Griffïth Elizabeth Hawkesworth John Southerne Thomas Ladies Magazine Oxford Magazine Goodwill Jasper mothers Burney Frances Lockhart John Gibson Nussbaum Felicity Lennox Charlotte LeGates Marlene Austen Jane Hemlow Joyce Aphra Behn Delarivier Manley...

.... Through close readings of George Etherege’s The Man of Mode, Aphra Behn’s The Rover, and William Congreve’s The Way of the World, this article illustrates how performed verse enables communication while also enriching literary interpretation. prologue...

... poets such as Katherine Philips, Anne Bradstreet, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, and Aphra Behn. His poetic influence extends to the present. ‘The Canonization’ opens with the speaker’s sharp command to a male friend who has criticised his love as unhealthy, destructive: The volume of Donne’s poetry...

..., Morgan Godwyn, Epifanio de Moirans, Thomas Tryon, Aphra Behn, and Samuel Sewall. circumstantial slavery natural slavery transatlantic slavery abolition antislavery arguments Baxter Richard Carolina England Jamaica Moirans Epifanio de Portugal proslavery arguments Sandoval Alonso de servitude...

... that the century’s manifold political changes placed intense strains on panegyric, and concludes by considering two poets who, under conditions of intense personal pressure, openly rejected it. Despite their different politics, George Wither and Aphra Behn both reflect valuably upon the limitations of this vital...

...This chapter looks at William Congreve's enormously popular but now unfamiliar play The Mourning Bride (1697) alongside Aphra Behn's play about an Indian queen, The Widow Ranter, and her heroic novella about an enslaved African prince, Oroonoko...

... in Aphra Behn's Love‐Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister (1684–7), arguably the first novel in English. Love‐Letters draws on the salacious details of the Berkeley–Grey affair, including details that emerged in the subsequent trial, and places the story of sexual...