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The Ordeal of Female Genius: Aphra Behn Across Centuries

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The Ordeal of Female Genius: Aphra Behn Across Centuries T.C. SÜLEYMEN DEMİREL ÜNİVERSİTESİ SOSYAL BİLİMLER ENSTİTÜSÜ BATI DİLLERİ VE EDEBİYATI ANABİLİM DALI THE ORDEAL OF FEMALE GENIUS: APHRA BEHN ACROSS CENTURIES Yeşim Sultan AKBAY 1230224040 YÜKSEK LİSANS TEZİ DANIŞMAN Yrd. Doç. Dr. Şule OKUROĞLU ÖZÜN ISPARTA- 2015 YEMİN METNİ TC SÜLEYMAN DEMİREL ÜNİVERSİTESİ Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Müdürlüğü Yüksek Lisans tezi olarak sunduğum “THE ORDEAL OF FEMALE GENIUS: APHRA BEHN ACROSS CENTURIES” adlı çalışmanın, tezin proje safhasından sonuçlanmasına kadar ki bütün süreçlerde bilimsel ahlak ve geleneklere aykırı düşecek bir yardıma başvurulmaksızın yazıldığını ve yararlandığım eserlerin Bibliyografya’da gösterilenlerden oluştuğunu, bunlara atıf yapılarak yararlanılmış olduğunu belirtir ve onurumla beyan ederim. Yeşim Sultan AKBAY 20.05.2015 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The present thesis would not have been possible without the help and support of many people. First of all, I would like to thank and express my deepest appreciation to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Beture Memmedova who taught me to be patient, academic, and self- disciplined from the beginning of my thesis to the end. With her great advices and corrections the thesis was formed to its final state. Thanks to her encouragement I have had the privilege to visit particular places and people concerning my subject matter in England. A friend, a great backer and an advisor; the man who held my hand so tightly and never let go through the period deserves a great thank as well. I thank Yunus Emre Akbay, my beloved husband, who commented on, helped, read and reread my thesis with patience, who visited all the libraries, bookshops, museums and university professors with me with great pleasure. My dearest family, my two fathers and mothers, sisters, and brother, to them I owe everything I have. Without them it would not have been possible to have a clear mind. I owe endless thanks to their prayers. Professor Dame Hermione Lee, who welcomed me twice at the Oxford University and advised me a plenty of resources along with sharing her opinions on the subject deserves a great acknowledgement. I thank Assist. Prof. Dr. Şule Okuroğlu Özün, Assist. Prof. Dr. Orkun Kocabıyık, and Assist. Prof. Dr. Mehmet Uysal for their academic contributions and supports. A special thanks to Assist. Prof. Dr. Kenan Oğuzhan Oruç who gave the thesis a magical appearance with his finishing touch. My dearest and precious friends Ayşenur Zeren, Bihter İşler, Buthaina İbrahim, Hardy Mahmood, and Şeyma Özcan deserve my sincerest thanks for their moral support. iii ABSTRACT THE ORDEAL OF FEMALE GENIUS: APHRA BEHN ACROSS CENTURIES Yeşim Sultan AKBAY Suleyman Demirel University, Department of Western Languages and Literature Master’s Thesis, 76 Pages, May 2015 Advisor: Assist. Prof. Dr. Şule OKUROĞLU ÖZÜN The thesis aims to bring out the image of Aphra Behn and her ordeal within centuries, who is accepted as the first professional English woman writer in English Literature. Aphra Behn, who deservedly gained the place of the literary foremother for English women writers, is an important figure with her mystic presence and controversial lifestyle along with her unusual works challenging the male literary world. As the first professional woman writer in the history of English Literature, the image of Behn has been questioned, revised and reassessed by many biographers, critics and scholars throughout centuries. Questions and debates about Behn as a literary figure have been ongoing up until today, including her origin, her background, literary merits and spy role. The development and transformation of the image of Behn is analysed within her mysterious and interesting life, the positive and negative views of her contemporaries, and the eighteenth, n ineteenth, and twentieth century critics, biographers and scholars, gradually helping her in gaining her already-deserved fame. Key Words: Aphra Behn, the agony of women writers, ordeal, obscurity, struggle, fame. iv ÖZET Bu tezin amacı, İngiliz Edebiyat tarihinin ilk profesyonel kadın yazarı olarak kabul edilen Aphra Behn imajını incelemektir. İngiliz kadın yazarlarının öncü unvanını hak ederek kazanmış olan Aphra Behn; mistik varlığı, çelişkili hayat tarzı ve erkek egemen edebiyat dünyasına meydan okuyan sıra dışı eserlere sahip olan önemli bir edebiyatçıdır. İngiliz Edebiyat tarihinin ilk profesyonel kadın yazarı olduğundan, Behn imajı yüzyıllar içerisinde biyografi yazarları, eleştirmenler ve akademisyenler tarafından sorgulanmış, incelenmiş ve tekrar tekrar değerlendirilmiştir. Bir edebiyatçı olarak Behn’in kökeni, yaşam süreci, edebi yetileri ve ajanlık görevi hakkındaki sorular ve yapılan tartışmalar günümüze kadar varlığını sürdürmüştür. Behn imajının gelişimi ve dönüşümü, onun mistik ve enteresan hayatı göz önüne alınarak; çağdaşları, on sekizinci, on dokuzuncu ve yirminci yüzyıl eleştirmenleri, biyografi yazarları ve edebiyatçıların pozitif ve negatif değerlendirmeleriyle, adım adım onun çoktan hak etmiş olduğu üne kavuşmasında nasıl bir rol oynadığının analiz edilmesi üzerinden incelenmiştir. Anahtar Kelimeler: Aphra Behn, kadın yazarların çilesi, çile, belirsizlik, mücadele, ün. v TABLE OF CONTENTS TEZ SAVUNMA TUTANAĞI ......................................................................................I YEMİN METNİ .......................................................................................................... II ACKNOWLEDGEMENT .......................................................................................... III ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................... IV ÖZET .......................................................................................................................... V TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................ VI CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1.1. BEING A WOMAN AND A WOMAN WRITER ............................................. 1 1.2. THE SUBJECT OF THE STUDY ..................................................................... 4 1.3. THE PURPOSE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY ............................... 5 1.4. THE METHODOLOGY OF THE STUDY ....................................................... 6 1.5. THE LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY ............................................................ 7 CHAPTER II STRUGGLE FOR AUTHORSHIP 2.1. ASTREA’S UNUSUAL AND MYSTERIOUS LIFE ........................................ 8 2.2. APHRA BEHN THROUGH THE EYES OF HER CONTEMPORARIES ...... 20 CHAPTER III TWO HUNDRED YEARS OF IGNORANCE 3.1. APHRA BEHN’S FAME AND REPUTATION IN THE 18TH CENTURY ... 35 3.2. APHRA BEHN THROUGH THE EYES OF VICTORIANS .......................... 46 CHAPTER IV REVIVAL: WOMAN WRITER’S CONQUEST 4.1. FROM OBSCURITY TO FAME .................................................................... 56 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................... 69 WORKS CITED ....................................................................................................... 71 CV .............................................................................................................................. 76 vi CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1.1. BEING A WOMAN AND A WOMAN WRITER Envy, malice, and all uncharitableness,—these are the fruits of a successful literary career for a woman.1 The study of women’s writing could be traced back to the eighth century BC, when in his Catalogue of Women, Hesoid listed heroines and goddesses; Plutarch listed heroic and artistic women in the work Moralia.2 As for the English Literature, it has no valid information about professional women writers up to the seventeenth century. In her seminal work A Room of One’s Own (1929), Virginia Woolf finds it odd not to have encountered any sixteenth century women writers’ names in the British Museum. The eighteenth century British examples included George Ballard’s (1752) Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain Who Have Been Celebrated for their Writing Skill in the Learned Languages, Arts, and Sciences and John Duncombe’s Feminiad treating women as a distinct category with a misogynist discourse. Women writers were also interested in the history of women’s writing. Mary Scott’s The Female Advocate: A Poem Occassioned by Reading Mr Duncombe’s Feminiad published in 1774 is one of 1 Angeline Goreau, Reconstructing Aphra: A Social Biography of Aphra Behn, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1980, p. 230. 2 http://www.theoi.com/Text/HesiodCatalogues.html, http://www.attalus.org/info/moralia.html, (13.04.2015). 1 the best known works in tracing a woman’s tradition in writing. Mary Hays, in 1803, published the six-volume Female Biography. In 1929, Virginia Woolf, as mentioned above, too, explores the tradition of women’s writing in her A Room of One’s Own. Additionally, anthologies and collections of women’s writing continued to be published. Yet some women writers are under the neglect of recognition due to insufficient historical data. It remains to wonder how many literature students and professors have heard of Aphra Behn. A woman who tried to show her abilities in various fields such as poetry, drama, novel and translation in a male-dominated world of the seventeenth-century Restoration England, Behn was dismissed from the literary history for a very long time. Surprisingly, the Norton Anthology of English Literature did not include her up until its sixth edition, published in 1993 —including only her Oroonoko (1688). Her contemporaries
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