Some Current Publications
Rent from DeepDyve- Some Current Publications
Mary Astell
Aphra Behn
Through an analysis of the word 'charm' and in the context of Behn's association with libertinism, Ballaster argues that "the 'charm' of poetry [...] is imagined in Behn's own verse as a satisfying substitute for the wayward and mercurial 'charms' of the libertine wit."
Finger states, "In this article, I shall discuss Behn's unconventional life, her motivation for writing Oroonoko, the possible sources for her eel description, and how her tragic love story about a royal slave became so well known that it drew others to what would become one of the most important animals for experimentation in the history of neuromuscular physiology and medicine."
By focusing on Behn's use of passive obedience in Oroonoko, Harol argues that "as a violent history of a largely passive royal slave who chooses exile over revolt, Oroonoko investigates the possibility of meaningful political action in a body whose ultimate destiny is desacralized passivity." She [End Page 99] understands the work to be "a specific product of 1688-89, as a hybrid text on many levels, and as a part of the complex Loyalist counter-theorization to emergent Whig orthodoxy about political subjectivity."
Hobby argues "for the existence of a female subculture of body-based humor" through the analysis of Aphra Behn's drama and Jane Sharp's midwife manual. She asserts that study of Behn's work would be enhanced by the knowledge of this subculture.
Following a detailed description of "racial thought of mid eighteenth to the early twentieth century," Hughes argues that Behn's "cultural management of the body" is more concerned with religious classification. Hughes warns against application of anachronistic concepts of race to Behn's Oroonoko.
By focusing on the use of the black body in Oroonoko, Mallipeddi "explore[s] the theoretical implication of the novella's emphasis on spectacle by utilizing spectacle as a category of analysis for a variety of representation, including those of heroism and victimization, of suffering and mutilation, and of the body and commodity" and finds that Behn's text "grasps—as does no other literary work of her time—the transformation of the black body into a commodity at the point of its insertion into the circuits of commercial exchange."
Morrow argues that "the absence of Florinda, Hellena, and Don Pedro's father is the lynch pin that holds The Rover's plot together, and that Behn uses this absence for both liberating and restrictive purposes." She focuses specifically on Don Pedro's disobedience and "the sisters' ability to pursue their own love interests and to eschew their predetermined futures"—the former of which "reveals the uncertainties of the old hereditary order and alludes to the inability of the newest generation to be proper stewards of their families' resources."
Overton performs a metrical analysis of Behn's "The Disappointment" and "To the fair Clarinda" in order "to cast light on that neglected part of her achievement." He calls for more work on her poetry, which he suspects would "show that Behn was more freely inventive and wide-ranging than any other poet of her period." [End Page 100]
