The Works of Aphra Behn

The Works of Aphra Behn PDF Author: Aphra Behn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English drama
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description

The Works of Aphra Behn

The Works of Aphra Behn PDF Author: Aphra Behn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English drama
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description


The Secret Life of Aphra Behn

The Secret Life of Aphra Behn PDF Author: Janet Todd
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1448212545
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 830

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Book Description
'All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn; for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds,' said Virginia Woolf. Yet that tomb, in Westminster Abbey, records one of the few uncontested facts about this Restoration playwright, poet, novelist and spy: the date of her death, 16 April 1689. For the rest secrecy and duplicity are almost the key to her life. She loved codes, making and breaking them; writing her life becomes a decoding of a passionate but playful woman. Janet Todd draws on documents she has rediscovered in the Dutch archives, and on Behn's own writings, to tell a story of court, diplomatic and sexual intrigue, and of the rise from humble origins of the first woman to earn her living as a professional writer. Aphra Behn's first notable employment was as a Royal spy in Holland; she had probably also spied in Surinam. It was not until she was in her thirties that she published the first of the 19 plays and other works which established her fame (though not riches) among her 'good, sweet, honey-candied readers'. Many of her works were openly erotic, indeed as frank as anything by her friends Wycherley and Rochester. Some also offered an inside view of court and political intrigues, and Todd reveals the historical scandals and legal cases behind some of Behn's most famous 'fictions'.

Oroonoko, the Rover and Other Works

Oroonoko, the Rover and Other Works PDF Author: Aphra Behn
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141958871
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
When Prince Oroonoko’s passion for the virtuous Imoinda arouses the jealousy of his grandfather, the lovers are cast into slavery and transported from Africa to the colony of Surinam. Oroonoko’s noble bearing soon wins the respect of his English captors, but his struggle for freedom brings about his destruction. Inspired by Aphra Behn’s visit to Surinam, Oroonoko (1688) reflects the author’s romantic view of Native Americans as simple, superior peoples ‘in the first state of innocence, before men knew how to sin’. The novel also reveals Behn’s ambiguous attitude to African slavery – while she favoured it as a means to strengthen England’s power, her powerful and moving work conveys its injustice and brutality.

The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn

The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn PDF Author: Derek Hughes
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139826948
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
Traditionally known as the first professional woman writer in English, Aphra Behn has now emerged as one of the major figures of the Restoration. She provided more plays for the stage than any other author and greatly influenced the development of the novel with her ground-breaking fiction, especially Love-Letters between a Nobleman and his Sister and Oroonoko, the first English novel set in America. Behn's work straddles the genres: beside drama and fiction, she also excelled in poetry and she made several important translations from French libertine and scientific works. This Companion discusses and introduces her writings in all these fields and provides the critical tools with which to judge their aesthetic and historical importance. It also includes a full bibliography, a detailed chronology and a description of the known facts of her life. The Companion will be an essential tool for the study of this increasingly important writer and thinker.

The Rover

The Rover PDF Author: Aphra Behn
Publisher: Joe Books Ltd
ISBN: 1987955684
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
The magic of Naples during Carnival inspires love between a disparate group of local citizens and visiting Englishmen.

Shakespeare, Aphra Behn and the Canon

Shakespeare, Aphra Behn and the Canon PDF Author: Lizbeth Goodman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135636281
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
A clear introduction to the idea of the canon, exploring the process by which certain works, and not others, receive high cultural status. The work of Shakespeare and Aphra Behn is used to illustrate and challenge this process.

Admired and Understood

Admired and Understood PDF Author: Michael L. Stapleton
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
ISBN: 9780874138498
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Admired and Understood analyzes Behn's only pure verse collection, Poems upon Several Occasions (1684), and situates her in her literary milieu as a poet. Behn's book demonstrates her desire for acceptance in her literary culture, to be admired and understood, as she puts its, the antitheses of what many surmise from reading her other works - that she saw herself primarily as a guerilla critic of her culture's views on race, class, and gender. The introduction to Admired and Understood argues that her colleagues thought of her as poet first, rather than as a dramatist, reviews current criticism about Behn, and provides a brief overview of late seventeenth-century poetical theory. The first chapter explains the intricately interwoven structure of Behn's collection. The next two chapters concern intertextual linkages between Behn and Abraham Cowley, as well as the influence of Thomas Creech's translations of Horace, Theocritus, and Lucretius on her poetics. The ensuing chapters concern Behn's response to Rochester's libertine aesthetic, a close reading of On a Juniper-Tree (a poem central to her collection), Katherine Philips as Behn's most important predecessor as a woman writin

Histories and novels

Histories and novels PDF Author: Aphra Behn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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The Critical Fortunes of Aphra Behn

The Critical Fortunes of Aphra Behn PDF Author: Janet Todd
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 9781571131652
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
This is the first study of the posthumous life of Aphra Behn, the extraordinary vicissitudes of her critical reception, and the personal vilifications of her reputation through three centuries. Beginning with the reception of Behn's work during her lifetime, which she herself helped to orchestrate by performing herself as a seductive woman, a beleaguered lady writer, and a serious intellectual, among other roles, the work ends with the late 20th-century reception of Behn, when the interest in gender, race, and class has made of her almost a postmodern writer. In the 17th century she was seen as a playwright of sexy and propagandist comedies, and attacked by those who disapproved her supposedly unfeminine stance and her royalist politics. Later, as the Restoration period itself fell into disrepute, Behn's plays were denigrated along with those of her fellow men, but greater opprobrium fell on her as a woman, because in the 19th century it was felt that a female writer should have higher morals than a man. During this period, Behn's reputation was exceedingly low, while her short story Oroonoko gained acclaim, freed from any association with its author or her supposedly squalid times. In the 18th and 19th centuries Oroonoko moved from being viewed as political commentary and heroic romance to a sentimental tale of doomed love and then an abolitionist text. In the early twentieth century it was hailed as one of the earliest realist texts, part of the great English ascent into the novel. JANET TODD is professor of English at the University of East Anglia

The Dutch Lover

The Dutch Lover PDF Author: Aphra Behn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 104

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Book Description
Sil. Why-I would have thee do-I know not what- Still to be with me-yet that will not satisfie; To let me-look upon thee-still that's not enough. I dare not say to kiss thee, and imbrace thee; That were to make me wish-I dare not tell thee what.Lo. Dear Alonzo! I shall love a Church the better this Month for giving me a sight of thee, whom I so little expected in this part of the World, and less in so sanctifi'd a Place. What Affair could be powerful enough to draw thee from the kind obliging Ladies of Brabant?Alon. First the sudden Orders of my Prince Don John, and next a fair Lady. Lo. A Lady! Can any of this Country relish with a Man that has been us'd to the Freedom of those of Bruxels, from whence I suppose you are now arriv'd?Alon. This morning I landed, from such a Storm, as set us all to making Vows of Conversion, (upon good Conditions) and that indeed brought me to Church.Lo. In that very Storm I landed too, but with less Sense of Danger than you, being diverted with a pleasant Fellow that came along with me, and who is design'd to marry a Sister of mine against my Will- And now I think of him, Gload, where hast thou left this Master of thine?Glo. At the Inn, Sir, in as lamentable a Pickle, as if he were still in the Storm; recruiting his emptyed Stomach with Brandy, and railing against all Women-kind for your Sister's sake, who has made him undertake this Voyage. Lo. Well, I'll come to him, go home before. [Ex. Gload.Alon. Prithee what thing is this?Lo. Why, 'tis the Cashier to this Squire I spoke of, a Man of Business, and as wise as his Master, but the graver Coxcomb of the two. But this Lady, Alonzo, who is this Lady thou speak'st of? shall not I know her? We were wont to divide the Spoils of Beauty, as well as those of War between us.Alon. O but this is no such Prize, thou wouldst hardly share this with the Danger, there's Matrimony in the Case.Lo. Nay, then keep her to thy self, only let me know who 'tis that can debauch thee to that scandalous way of Life; is she fair? will she recompense the Folly?Alon. Faith, I know not, I never saw her yet, but 'tis the Sister of Marcel, whom we both knew last Summer in Flanders, and where he and I contracted such a Friendship, that without other Consideration he promis'd me Hippolyta, for that's his Sister's Name.Lo. But wo't thou really marry her?Alon. I consider my Advantage in being allied to so considerable a Man as Ambrosio, her Father; I being now so unhappy as not to know my Birth or Parents.Lo. I have often heard of some such thing, but durst not ask the Truth of it.