Some current publications

MARY ASTELL

Kendrick, Nancy. "Mary Astell's Theory of Spiritual Friendship." British Journal for the History of Philosophy, vol. 26, no. 1, 2018, pp. 46-65. This article argues that Mary Astell's theory of friendship in Serious Proposal to the Ladies is anti-Aristotelian, as Aristotle insists upon virtue friendships; Astell instead grounds her concept in Christian and Platonist metaphysics. Kendrick justifies this interpretation by looking at the importance of female-female bonds as a replacement of female-male marriage. While Aristotle advocates same-sex friendships amongst men, he claims that women were morally inferior and thus unable to experience virtuous friendship, so marriage or kinship was the only meaningful social relationship women could develop. Alternatively, Astell's Serious Proposal promotes female spiritual friendship through non-kinship bonds and resists marriage.

APHRA BEHN

Arena, Tiziana Febronia. Masking the Drama: A Space for Revolution in Aphra Behn's The Rover and The Feign'd Courezans. Peter Lang Publishing, 2017. Arena analyzes the gender binaries in a few of Aphra Behn's plays by looking at how the female characters challenge their social positions and, in turn, enact a revolution for female communities. This short book investigates the issues of power and identity in an attempt to understand the changing social order during the Restoration.

Howell, Jordan. "Aphra Behn, Editor." The Review of English Studies, New Series, vol. 68, no. 285, 2016, pp. 549-565. This article examines Behn's letter to her publisher, entitled "Memoirs of Mrs. Behn," in order to reveal how Behn was not only a writer but also an editor in the ways she prepared her works for publication. Howell describes a specific time in Behn's career, approximately 1683 to 1684, and looks at her Poems upon Several Occasions. Behn's remarks in the letter suggest that she yielded great attention to genre and form in English poetry, which Howell argues translates to Poems. Howell notes Behn's extensive revisions to the poems to reveal that she was an editor just as much as she was an author.

Ingrassia, Catherine. "Aphra Behn, Captivity, and Emperor of the Moon." Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660-1700, vol. 41, no. 2, 2017, pp. 53-67. Ingrassia investigates Behn's experience in Surinam and how it shaped the way she later perceived English culture. In Emperor of the Moon, the disproportionate power structure between the colonizer and the colonial subject is reflected through the various narratives of submission, especially marriage. Ingrassia closes by stating, "Reframing the context of Emperor of the Moon to foreground its engagement with issues of empire and captivity enriches our understanding of a text that, though too frequently discussed as 'just a farce,' fundamentally contributes to Behn's nuanced treatment of English colonial actions" (63).

Klein, Bernhard. "Oroonoko and the Mapping of Africa." English Literature and the Disciplines of Knowledge, Early Modern to Eighteenth Century: A Trade for Light, edited by Jorge Bastos da Silva and Miguel Ramalhete Gomes, BRILL, 2017, pp. 25-55. This chapter argues that the social process of cartography (i.e., the illustrations of people in the margins of maps) affected people's understandings of racial diversity in Restoration fiction, particularly Behn's Oroonoko. Klein looks specifically at two maps of Africa, Sebastian Münster's Cosmography and Abraham Ortelius's Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, since they were most commonly the ones that aristocrats used as decoration in their homes. Along the sides of these maps, light-skinned North Africans were placed at the top, while dark-skinned figures were toward the bottom, and the further down, the more savage they appeared; skin color was in direct correlation to how Europeans viewed Africans. As a result, Klein suggests that Oroonoko was put at a disadvantage not only because he was taken as a slave but because his presumed complexion also resembled the cannibals and savages in the cartography.

Smyth, Maura. "Going Undercover with Aphra Behn's 'Female Pen.'" Women Writing Fancy: Authorship and Autonomy from 1611 to 1812, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 151-198. Smyth studies Behn's apparent rejection of Fancy in Oroonoko to impose a new meaning upon it, a...