Vikki Harris and Brandon Fiedor

English 563

20 January 2010

Oroonoko: or, The Royal Slave

Annotated Bibliography

Anderson, Emily Hodgson. “Novelty in Novels: A Look at What’s New in Aphra Behn’s

Oroonoko.” Studies in the Novel 39.1 (2007): 1-16. Print.

In this piece Anderson calls for a new approach to the classification and study of the novel and in particular to narratives written between the 1680s and 1780s. She suggests that the study of the novel acknowledge and preserve the unique nature of each text, while simultaneously linking them through Ian Watt’s “lowest common denominator.” However, unlike Watt Anderson asks that “we reimagine the lowest common denominator . . . to be a new and conscious focus on novelty itself” (2). Using this definition, Anderson looks to Oroonoko and more specifically to what she sees as its emphasis on the novelty of interpretation.

For Anderson the novelty of interpretation can only be understood through the lens of what she sees as the text’s debate over visual and verbal representation; and so by highlighting the text’s emphasis on the importance of the visual to learning and the subjective nature of interpretation as revealed through close readings of several scenes, Anderson makes a strong case for a reconsideration of Oroonoko based upon this particular novelty. In this light Anderson suggests that Oroonoko positions itself as a tool for the teaching of individual interpretation and that its importance lies less in “what it is . . . [than] what it holds” (12). Not only does this article contribute to a deeper understanding of Oroonoko in particular, but it reveals a completely new dimension in which to approach and access novels from a similar period.

Chibka, Robert L. “’Oh! Do Not Fear a Woman’s Invention’: Truth, Falsehood, and Fiction in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 30.4 (1988): 510-537. Print.

Robert Chibka addresses a problem surrounding the modern criticism of Aphra Behn’s work which he identifies as a “critical obsession” with the author’s life, an obsession that has blinded many to the value of her literary contributions (513). According to Chibka, critics have invented a new kind of sexism by evaluating Oroonoko based on the narrator’s truth-claim, something one would never think to do with Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Chibka seeks to re-evaluate Oroonoko through a tridental thesis: that this novel presents relationships too complex for simple acceptance; that it confronts “equations of the rhetorical and the moral;” and that ignorance of the depth of Behn’s writing has acted as a springboard for the fixation on its autobiographical accuracy (513).

Chibka supports his thesis by tracing contradictions through the narrative. He analyzes Behn’s representation of the native, nature, and Oroonoko through a discussion of beauty and truth. The narrator’s mistrust of invention is applied to Oroonoko’s army officers and the slave trader. Chibka further embarks on a study of relationship. He elucidates Behn’s portrayal of the body, her use of superstition, and the parallels between the narrator and Oroonoko. Chibka is able to conclude that regardless of the biographical accuracy of the narrative, the novel’s value and worth as a work to be read, studied, and discussed cannot be disputed.

Figlerowicz, Marta. “’Frightful Spectacles of a Mangled King’”: Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko and

Narration through Theater.” New Literary History 39 (2008): 321-334. Print.

In this piece Figlerowicz attempts to make a clear connection between the theatrical genre and the development of the early novel. She chooses to examine Oroonoko not only because of its status in the history and development of the novel, but also because of the efficacy of its narrative structure. Figlerowicz attributes the effectiveness of the narrative to Behn’s use of spectatorship. According to Figlerowicz, the sense of spectatorship that is employed consistently throughout the novel makes the narrative so effective because of the immediacy and subjectivity it invokes. Because we as readers are constantly shown characters, places, and events rather than told about them, we become witnesses, active spectators, within the narrative rather than passive recipients of it. In this way, spectatorship not only legitimates the narrator and the narrative, but it also makes the exotic accessible and believable.

While Figlerowicz’s emphasis on spectatorship proves convincing in explaining the narrative’s efficacy, it is only when she examines characterization and spectatorship specifically that the theatrical genre, its conventions, and its close relationship to Oroonoko and the early novel’s structure becomes apparent. Relying on the work of Philip Fisher and Friedrich Nietzsche, she claims that by abandoning introspection as a means of characterization in favor of the projection of a character’s traits in the physical world Behn is drawing upon basic elements of theatrical characterization. This observation in concert with the employment of spectatorship within the novel makes for a rather convincing argument that not only does Oroonoko possess several elements that make it as a novel similar to a traditional drama, but also that the relationship between the theater and the novel may be more closely related than previously suspected.

Homesland, Oddvar. “Aphra Behn’s ‘Oroonoko’: Cultural Dialectics and the Novel.” ELH 68.1 (2001): 57-79. JSTOR. Web. 13 Jan 2010.

Oddvar Homesland’s article asserts that Aphra Behn’s Oroononko reflects a shift in English society from the romantic to the progressive. By examining the words and attitudes of the narrator, as well as Behn’s own voice, he draws conclusions about her and the world she inhabits.

According to Homesland, Behn’s narrator projects ambiguity about the author’s intentions and political leanings. On one hand, the narrator seems a self-professed conservative and on the other she supports “mercantile expansion” (57). While she clearly admires enlightened individuals, she portrays them based on an established value system. Claiming to be an unbiased eyewitness, the narrator nonetheless inserts a type of morality. It is Homesland’s assertion that the narrator’s vacillation acts an indicator of societal change.

Homesland theorizes that rather than attempting to juxtapose aristocratic and native society in her depiction of the English, Coramantien, and Surinamese, Behn actually exposes certain shortcomings of an English culture in decline. His best evidence for this is in Behn’s flattering letter to Maitland. Homesland compares Behn’s admiration for Maitland’s impeccable example of aristocracy with her portrayal of Oroonoko as a Europeanized, elevated native. Oroonoko is meant to portray Behn’s idealized aristocrat: decorous, erudite, and chivalric.

Hughes, Derek. “Race, Gender, and Scholarly Practice: Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko.” Essays in Criticism 52.1 (2002): 1-22. Oxfordjournals.org. Web. 18 Jan 2010.

Despite its title, this essay is not purely a study of race and gender in Oroonoko. Rather, it is a scathing rebuttal to recent scholarly criticism of Aphra Behn and her representations of culture and sexuality. Hughes accuses respected critics such as Margaret Ferguson and Catherine Gallagher of misrepresenting Behn’s biography, misreading the text, and forcing meaning onto passages.

Hughes begins with an attack on Margaret Ferguson’s articles that charge Behn with fearing black sexuality. He tauntingly repeats a phrase she uses verbatim in three separate articles: “we feel ‘uneasy when we hold the book Oroonoko in our hands’” (3). He then proceeds to dismember her argument with factual proof from Behn’s history and that of English drama.

Hughes next examines Catherine Gallagher’s article tracing Behn’s treatment of race in Oroonoko. She presents Behn as an author-monarch, ruler of the pen and ink. She equates Oroonoko with the ink, linking ideas of property and ownership. Hughes refutes her entire argument, citing Gallagher’s misquotation of a key passage and misunderstanding of Oroonoko as a king. Similarly, Hughes challenges critical works which have ignored the link between religion and slavery. He claims too much emphasis has been put on race. Hughes concludes that Oroonoko has been viewed too often through the lens of ideology and not enough through that of fictional literature.

Sills, Adam. “Surveying ‘The Map of Slavery’ in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko.” Journal of Narrative

Theory 36.3 (2006): 314-340. Print.

Here Sills attempts to challenge common understandings of Oroonoko as an early piece of realist prose and as a novel best understood within the historical context of imperial Britain’s triangular trade. He claims that particular attempts to historicize Oroonoko, namely the Bedford edition edited by Catherine Gallagher, passively appropriate a geographical lens without acknowledging ideological and political biases inherent to such a frame. In fact, Sills suggests that far from accepting any predetermined geography, Behn consciously critiques and subverts popular concepts of space and power through her implementation of geographic and cartographic themes. He asks that our understanding of Oroonoko as critique be expanded to include that concerning “the geography of the triangular trade and its antecedents” (320).

Through a close examination of several key moments in the text, Sills is able to show that Oroonoko not only displays a distrust for and warning against the acceptance of cartography as anything less than a hidden discourse whose main goal is to spread a particular culture’s political, social, and economic world view, but that the novel also manipulates reality and realism as a way of subverting the false notion of “fluid space” maps and globes attempt to create. With geography as the locus of his argument, Sills is able to prove that Oroonoko resists the particular type of historicism applied to it by Gallagher and that it also rejects realist notions of representation.