Some Current Publications
Rent from DeepDyve- Some Current Publications
Individuals
Aphra Behn
Drawing on current scholarship of "mulatto individuals born to unions between European slave traders and their West African wives and mistresses," the "Atlantic creole," Beach re-reads Oroonoko's roles as a slave trader and slave owner to interrogate the dominant assumptions of Eurocentric-Atlantic history. Beach argues that, while Behn's text deserves rigorous anti-slavery consideration, it also deserves scrutiny for its depiction of the slave-trade's complexities. [NN]
Findlay explores how the city shaped some comedic works of Elizabeth Polwhele, Aphra Behn, and Susanna Centlivre from 1660 to 1705. The article primarily delves into "how women coped with the high-risk strategy of participating in commercial theatre and the vast circulation of trade which grew up around the City." [SS]
Stewart keys in on Behn's use of sexual assault in her plays. By Stewart's count, nine of Behn's plays contain scenes of sexual violence. Stewart explores the how and why of Behn's scenes of sexual violence, in addition to looking at "the critical impact that the scenes have in shaping and defining the comedy of intrigue genre," and attempts to "assess how [Behn's] creations are unique, complex, and visually dynamic performances" (21). [SS]
Thomas Betterton
Roberts uses the example of Thomas Betterton—and to a [End Page 71] lesser extent Henry Harris—to provide evidence to help determine the social status of actors in the seventeenth century. Roberts believes that the professional and social lives of Betterton and Harris suggest "that actors might be accommodated within mainstream discourses of respectability to a far greater extent than is represented in existing accounts." [SS]
Roberts claims this biography of Betterton to be the first attempted since 1891. The two aims of Roberts's biography are "to reconsider Betterton's significance for Restoration London, and to show his public profile was rooted in the particulars of his personal life" (4). Roberts defends Betterton's legacy and attempts to reestablish Betterton as a central figure in Restoration theatre. [SS]
Robert Boyle
Macrakis explores the fascination with cryptography and steganography characteristic of four leaders of the Scientific Revolution—Giambatista della Porta, John Wilkins, John Wallis, and Robert Boyle. She argues that, generally, these scientific leaders advocated more openness in sharing scientific findings and experimental knowledge and more closed communication in relaying matters of state. [NN]
Anne Bradstreet
This essay responds to two major trends in Bradstreet research that read her as a proto-feminist who sought to rebel against dominant contemporary discourse or as religious writer whose writing evinces varying degrees of Puritan dogmatism. Through her reading of "Here Followes Some Verses Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666," Giffen argues, instead, that Bradstreet "narrates the emblematic struggle between the spiritual and the material and, in the process, exposes how the categories themselves are gendered," a performance that demonstrates the complicated and conflicting negotiation necessary for a woman to write within the gendered discourse of her time. [NN]
John Bunyan
Adopting a psychobiographical approach, Cefalu evaluates Bunyan's Grace Abounding to the Chief of All...
