Some Current Publications

Individuals

John Aubrey

See Science & Technology (Bennett)

Aphra Behn

Dickson, Vernon Guy. "Truth, Wonder, and Exemplarity in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko." SEL 47 (2007): 573-94. Although many have sought to discover the objective truth behind Oroonoko 's narrative, Dickson argues that Behn's piece is "interested in moral more than narrowly factual truth." Throughout the text, Dickson claims that "Behn uses wonder (especially in the character of Oroonoko) and the current vogue of travel narratives" to "establish moral and royal precedent." Thus, instead of searching for the facts of the story, the reader ought "to learn from the moral lessons that Behn presents and that Oroonoko embodies."

Gabbard, D. Christopher. "Clashing Masculinities in Aphra Behn's The Dutch Lover." SEL 47 (2007): 557-72. According to Gabbard, Behn's The Dutch Lover"delineates not a monolithic masculine practice but various masculinities coexisting on a spectrum bounded by the terms warlike and effeminate." Behn traffics in national stereotypes, contrasting "warlike Spanish machismo" with "effeminate Dutch expediency." Alonzo, however, functions as "the one male character whose masculinity undergoes transformation"; he must learn to moderate his initial Cavalier dissolution, "to turn away from slavishly following the dictates of passion." Thus, Gabbard claims, the play questions "what constitutes proper male behavior."

Markley, Robert. "Aphra Behn's The City Heiress: Feminism and the Dynamics of Popular Success on the Late Seventeenth-Century Stage." Comparative Drama 41 (2007): 141-66. Markley proposes to "explore the complex relationship between Behn's protofeminist skepticism, her ironic questioning of love and marriage, and the popularity of a play that intrigued her contemporaries." Behn inverts the traditional hierarchy whereby men have money and women must beg of their husbands; instead, her heroes are dispossessed and must seek out matrimony as a socioeconomic necessity. At the same time, her heroines "must learn to distance themselves from the fantasy of the rake reformed," even as they "remain complicit in the fantasies that marriage will extend indefinitely the excitement of courtship."

See also: GENDER & SEXUALITY (Chedgzoy), LITERATURE (Rabb), THEATRE (Cordner and Holland)

Thomas Betterton

Roberts, David. "Thomas Betterton, Bookseller's Apprentice." The Review of English Studies 58 (2007): 473-81. Roberts examines a "hitherto undiscovered entry in the Stationers' Company Court Books" to shed light on Thomas Betterton's early years. Despite Betterton's own claims about his youth, Roberts finds no evidence that "anyone called Betterton was legally bound" as a bookseller's apprentice "during the actor's lifetime." Roberts provides two possible explanations for this lack of evidence: either "this famously virtuosic and virtuous actor was prone to lapses of memory, or he liked to tell a small but self-aggrandising fib about his past, since to be apprenticed formally to a bookseller was a cut above merely working for one." Given the difficulties faced by royalists and actors during the Interregnum, Roberts suggests that we may view Betterton's later career "as a personal act of restoration."

Robert Boyle

See LOCKE (Jones), SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY (Bennett)

Anne Bradstreet

See GENDER & SEXUALITY (Chedgzoy, Gray)

Margaret Cavendish

See GENDER & SEXUALITY (Chedgzoy, Wynne-Davies)

William Cavendish

Major, Philip. "A Previously Unknown Poem by William Cavendish, First Duke of Newcastle." Notes and Queries 54 (2007): 409-11. Major reproduces an "untitled and previously unpublished poem by Newcastle." The work, a "short, untitled poem intended as the frontispiece for his unpublished treatise, 'The Truth off the Sorde,'" provides a "striking contrast to the light-hearted sentiments" of Newcastle's other works, and it reflects "on the almost elemental battle between implicitly royalist virtues, and…nefarious Parliamentarian characteristics." Newcastle's use of "empowering connections with the animal kingdom" also exposes "an important literary device in the royalist exile's retention and re-assertion of self-identity."

See also: GENDER & SEXUALITY (Chedgzoy, Wynne-Davies)

Abraham Cowley

See ANDREW MARVELL (Sawday)

William Davenant

See THEATRE (Kroll)

John Dryden

Fleck, Andrew. "The Shepherd Proteus in Dryden's 'Annus Mirabilis.'" Notes and Queries 54 (2007): 429-31. Fleck describes an "unrecognized typological allusion" in Dryden's Annus Mirabilis, one which "adds another element of divine favour to the figures of sacred kingship Dryden includes in his celebration of...