Gestus and Signature in Aphra Behn's the Rover Author(S): Elin Diamond Reviewed Work(S): Source: ELH, Vol
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
FRENCH INFLUENCES on ENGLISH RESTORATION THEATRE a Thesis
FRENCH INFLUENCES ON ENGLISH RESTORATION THEATRE A thesis submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University In partial fulfillment of A the requirements for the Degree 2oK A A Master of Arts * In Drama by Anne Melissa Potter San Francisco, California Spring 2016 Copyright by Anne Melissa Potter 2016 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL I certify that I have read French Influences on English Restoration Theatre by Anne Melissa Potter, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Arts: Drama at San Francisco State University. Bruce Avery, Ph.D. < —•— Professor of Drama "'"-J FRENCH INFLUENCES ON RESTORATION THEATRE Anne Melissa Potter San Francisco, California 2016 This project will examine a small group of Restoration plays based on French sources. It will examine how and why the English plays differ from their French sources. This project will pay special attention to the role that women played in the development of the Restoration theatre both as playwrights and actresses. It will also examine to what extent French influences were instrumental in how women develop English drama. I certify that the abstract rrect representation of the content of this thesis PREFACE In this thesis all of the translations are my own and are located in the footnote preceding the reference. I have cited plays in the way that is most helpful as regards each play. In plays for which I have act, scene and line numbers I have cited them, using that information. For example: I.ii.241-244. -
The Rover by Aphra Behn
By Shailesh Ranjan Assistant Professor Dept. of English, Maharaja College, Ara. About the Author Aphra Behn was one of the first English professional writers wrote plays, poetry, short stories and novels. Little information is known about her early life. She was born in about 1640 near Canterbury, England.Her family were Royalists, connected with powerful catholic families and the court. She may have been raised Catholic and educated in a convent abroad. As one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, she broke cultural barriers and served as a literary role model for later generations of women authors. Rising from obscurity, she came to the notice of Charles II , who employed her as a spy in Antwerp. •After her return to London she started her writings. •She wrote under the pastrol pseudonym Astrea. •A staunch supporter of the Stuart Line, she declined an invitation from Bishop Burnet to write a welcoming poem to the new king William III. •She died shortly after. Her grave is not included in the Poets Corner but lies in the East Cloister near the steps to the church. •Virginia Woolf writes about her in her famous work ‘A Room of One’s Own’ - “ All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn which is , most scandalously but rather appropriately, in Westminster Abbey, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.” • She challenged with expressing herself in a patriarchal system that generally refused to grant merit to women’s views.Women who went against were in risk of being exiled from their communities and targeted to be involved in witch hunts. -
Print This Article
JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES – VOLUME 17 (2019), 127-147. http://doi.org/10.18172/jes.3565 “DWINDLING DOWN TO FARCE”?: APHRA BEHN’S APPROACH TO FARCE IN THE LATE 1670S AND 80S JORGE FIGUEROA DORREGO1 Universidade de Vigo [email protected] ABSTRACT. In spite of her criticism against farce in the paratexts of The Emperor of the Moon (1687), Aphra Behn makes an extensive use of farcical elements not only in that play and The False Count (1681), which are actually described as farces in their title pages, but also in Sir Patient Fancy (1678), The Feign’d Curtizans (1679), and The Second Part of The Rover (1681). This article contends that Behn adapts French farce and Italian commedia dell’arte to the English Restoration stage mostly resorting to deception farce in order to trick old husbands or fathers, or else foolish, hypocritical coxcombs, and displaying an impressive, skilful use of disguise and impersonation. Behn also turns widely to physical comedy, which is described in detail in stage directions. She appropriates farce in an attempt to please the audience, but also in the service of her own interests as a Tory woman writer. Keywords: Aphra Behn, farce, commedia dell’arte, Restoration England, deception, physical comedy. 1 The author wishes to acknowledge funding for his research from the Spanish government (MINECO project ref. FFI2015-68376-P), the Junta de Andalucía (project ref. P11-HUM-7761) and the Xunta de Galicia (Rede de Lingua e Literatura Inglesa e Identidade III, ref. ED431D2017/17). 127 Journal of English Studies, vol. 17 (2019) 127-147 Jorge Figueroa DORREGO “DWINDLING DOWN TO FARCE”?: LA APROXIMACIÓN DE APHRA BEHN A LA FARSA EN LAS DÉCADAS DE 1670 Y 1680 RESUMEN. -
The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn Edited by Derek Hughes and Janet Todd Frontmatter More Information
Cambridge University Press 0521820197 - The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn Edited by Derek Hughes and Janet Todd Frontmatter More information The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn Traditionally known as the first professional woman writer in English, Aphra Behn has now emerged as one of the major figures of the Restoration. During the 1670s and 1680s, she provided more plays for the stage than any other author, and greatly influenced the development of the novel with her ground- breaking fiction, especially Love-Letters between a Noble-Man and his Sister, and Oroonoko, the first English novel set in America. Behn’s work straddles the genres: beside drama and fiction, she also excelled in poetry and she made several important translations from French libertine and scientific works. The chapters in this Companion discuss and introduce her writings in all these fields and provide the critical tools with which to judge their aesthetic and historical importance. The book also includes a full bibliography, a detailed chronology, and a description of the known facts of her life. The Companion will be an essential tool for the study of this increasingly important writer and thinker. derek hughes is Professor of English Literature at the University of Aberdeen. In addition to many articles on Restoration drama and its back- ground, he has published Dryden’s Heroic Plays (1980), English Drama, 1660– 1700 (1996), and The Theatre of Aphra Behn (2001). He was the general editor of the six-volume Eighteenth Century Women Playwrights (2001), and has just completed an edition of early modern texts concerning slavery and America, which includes Behn’s and Southerne’s versions of Oroonoko. -
The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn Edited by Derek Hughes and Janet Todd Frontmatter More Information
Cambridge University Press 0521527201 - The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn Edited by Derek Hughes and Janet Todd Frontmatter More information The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn Traditionally known as the first professional woman writer in English, Aphra Behn has now emerged as one of the major figures of the Restoration. During the 1670s and 1680s, she provided more plays for the stage than any other author, and greatly influenced the development of the novel with her ground- breaking fiction, especially Love-Letters between a Noble-Man and his Sister, and Oroonoko, the first English novel set in America. Behn’s work straddles the genres: beside drama and fiction, she also excelled in poetry and she made several important translations from French libertine and scientific works. The chapters in this Companion discuss and introduce her writings in all these fields and provide the critical tools with which to judge their aesthetic and historical importance. The book also includes a full bibliography, a detailed chronology, and a description of the known facts of her life. The Companion will be an essential tool for the study of this increasingly important writer and thinker. derek hughes is Professor of English Literature at the University of Aberdeen. In addition to many articles on Restoration drama and its back- ground, he has published Dryden’s Heroic Plays (1980), English Drama, 1660– 1700 (1996), and The Theatre of Aphra Behn (2001). He was the general editor of the six-volume Eighteenth Century Women Playwrights (2001), and has just completed an edition of early modern texts concerning slavery and America, which includes Behn’s and Southerne’s versions of Oroonoko. -
4 Contextualizing Aphra Behn: Plays, Politics, and Party, 1679-1689
4 Contextualizing Aphra Behn: plays, politics, and party, 1679-1689 Melinda Zook The recent explosion of interest in the seventeenth-century English playwright, novelist, and poet, Aphra Behn, has led to numerous and diverse explorations of her life and work. Behn's colorful if often mysterious life has been the subject of five biographies and the stuff of at least two novels.1 She has been celebrated as one of the most prolific and popular playwrights of the Restoration and an early practitioner of the novel.2 Scholars have portrayed her as a thorough-going feminist, a libertine and an opponent of the domestic tyranny of patriarchy, and an abolitionist, writing one of the first anti-slavery novels in Western literature.3 Despite the recent avalanche of scholarship, little has been written 1 George Woodstock, The Incomparable Aphra (London: Boardman, 1948); W. J. Cameron, New Light on Aphra Behn (Auckland: The University of Auckland Press, 1961); Maureen Duffy, The Passionate Shepherdess: Aphra Behn, 1640-1689 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1977); Angeline Goreau, Reconstructing Aphra (New York: Dial Press, 1980); Sara Mendelson, The Mental World of Stuart Women: Three Studies, chap. 3, "Aphra Behn" (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987), 116-84. I know of two novels about Behn: Emily Hahn, Purple-Passage: A Novel about a Lady both Famous and Fantastic (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1950); Ross Laidlaw, Aphra Behn - Dispatch 'd from Athole (Nairn: Balnain Books, 1992). 2 Behn wrote at least seventeen plays, fourteen prose fictions, several translations, and two volumes of original poetry. Judith Phillips Stanton has demonstrated that Behn was the second most successful female dramatist writing between the years 1660 and 1800. -
Censorship of Early English Women Dramatists. Sigrid Marika King Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College
Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1994 "Vertue Vanish'd": Censorship of Early English Women Dramatists. Sigrid Marika King Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation King, Sigrid Marika, ""Vertue Vanish'd": Censorship of Early English Women Dramatists." (1994). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 5807. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/5807 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand corner and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. -
John Milton and Aphra Behn John Milton John Milton
Culture Literature in the 17th Century: John Milton and Aphra Behn John Milton John Milton John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet. He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost (1667), written in blank verse. - William Hayley's 1796 biography called him the "greatest English author", and he remains generally regarded "as one of the preeminent writers in the English language" John Milton's poetic style The poetic style of John Milton, also known as Miltonic verse, Miltonic epic, or Miltonic blank verse, was a highly influential poetic structure popularized by Milton. Although Milton wrote earlier poetry, his influence is largely grounded in his later poems: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained Although Milton was not the first to use blank verse, his use of it was very influential and he became known for the style. When Miltonic verse became popular, Samuel Johnson mocked Milton for inspiring bad blank verse, but he recognized that Milton's verse style was very influential. Poets such as Alexander Pope, whose final, incomplete work was intended to be written in the form, and John Keats, who complained that he relied too heavily on Milton, adopted and picked up various aspects of his poetry. In particular, Miltonic blank verse became the standard for those attempting to write English epics for centuries following the publication of Paradise Lost and his later poetry. Milton talked about liberties "the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties“ and of these liberties is divorce. -
Aphra Behn (1640-1689)* by Janet Todd
Aphra Behn (1640-1689)* by Janet Todd Aphra Behn was England’s first major professional woman writer. Living in the Restoration, she wrote at least nineteen plays, some good, some indifferent, but all fast paced and theatrical. She also authored one of the earliest English novels, Love-letters between a Nobleman and his Sister (1684-1687), as well as short stories, several volumes of poems and two scientific translations from French. She knew and wrote for Nell Gwyn, John Dryden, the Earl of Rochester and the Duke of York and was both famous and notorious in her time. To some she was ‘the Ingenious Mrs Behn’ and to others ‘a lewd harlot’. She was largely forgotten in later centuries, but when she was remembered, she evoked extreme responses. Virginia Woolf wanted flowers to fall on her grave for having given women the right to speak their minds, while eminent Victorian ladies and gentlemen dismissed her as disgraceful and vile. Now, much sustained interest is brewing in her and her works, which are being reprinted in paperback. My biography, The Secret Life of Aphra Behn (1996), has just appeared and her plays are being performed, including The Second Part of the Rover, staged this year in England for the first time since 1681. In the last decade, Behn has been canonized as the ‘First Lady of Cultural Studies,’ because of her overwhelming interest in race, gender and class. Although the Old Guard of English Literature grumbles at the phenomenon, believing that she is part of the debasement of the subject, she is, I suspect and hope, here to stay. -
Aphra Behn's the ROVER
PLAY THEME PACKAGE Aphra Behn’s THE ROVER In Production At Brock University February, 2002 Contents Aphra Behn: #1 Female Playwright of the English Restoration .........1 Born in Interesting Times Stranded in Guiana An Unhappy Marriage and the Great Plague of London Spying in the Dutch Wars A Professional Woman Playwright Arrested for Sedition How to Spot a Restoration Comedy ......................................................3 A huge, passionate performance style full of direct audience address Stock Characters and Comedy of Manners: The “Mall Rats” of its time Bawdy Plots where Women Play Womens’ Roles Plots riddled with subplots and intrigues of every kind Characters drawn from A Broad Cross Section of Society Rhyming Couplets, Court Masque, Musical and Tragi-Comedy Epic stories with many changes of location, music, dances and magnificent painted spectacles The Love of Carnival Why Set a Restoration Play on the eve of the Second World War? ....6 The struggle for “ liberty” The International Brigade context “fits” the cavalier characters The 1930’s context foregrounds the relevance of Behn’s gender concerns The Second World War signals the world’s most extreme struggle for liberty The International Brigade context creates high stakes for the male characters The ethics of the soldier on foreign soil Contemporary scorn of the Libertine character Interpretation of the Rover Production Information ........................................................................10 The Adaptation Production Approach Brock’s Production Team Appendix.................................................................................................11 -
Image of Aphra Behn in English Literature Dr
Image of Aphra Behn in English Literature Dr. C. Chellappan Guest Faculty of English, Department of English & Comparative Literature Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai. Dr. V. Nagarajan Associate Professor and Head, Department of English Alagappa Government Arts College, Karaikudi ==================================================================== Abstract Aphra Behn was a playwright, poet and well-known translator lived in a world of men as a staunch Royalist in her ideals. She was the first woman in England to identify herself as a professional writer. She wrote to the occasion and also to make money. There has been a steady tendency to see Aphra Behn as an individual phenomenon, rather than as the author of a series of works that are appealing in their personal right. It is imperative to affirm at the start that even now we know more or less nothing for certain about Behn's life. She was expelled from the sorts of institutions from which historians usually assemble their records, such as Oxford and Cambridge, the Inns of Court, and the Middle Temple. If she'd been a noble, there might have been records existing at her country seat. If she'd been a sacred dissenter, she might have recorded her thoughts and ideas about her internal life in a religious journal as so many women did. Hence, the paper traces the image of Aphra Bhen in Literary arena. Keywords: Aphra Behn, Image, Literature Preamble In seeking Aphra Behn’s life what we do know is that she was born in England, possibly to a barber and a wet-nurse living in Kent. In her youth she undertook spying missions for Charles II, in Antwerp, and probably visited the colony of Surinam. -
Aphra Behn and Susanna Centlivre: a Materialist- Feminist Study
Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1995 Aphra Behn and Susanna Centlivre: A Materialist- Feminist Study. Amy Margaret Atchley Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Atchley, Amy Margaret, "Aphra Behn and Susanna Centlivre: A Materialist-Feminist Study." (1995). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 5940. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/5940 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from themicrofilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps.