Aphra Behn was the first Englishwoman to earn her living from writing. This collection of critical essays explores the different genres in Behn's canon, including her plays, criticism, fiction and poetry, from a wide variety of feminist theoretical approaches.

A volume in the Writers and Their Work series, which draws upon recent thinking in English studies to introduce writers and their contexts. Each volume includes biographical material, an examination of recent criticism, a bibliography and a reappraisal of a major work by the writer.

Kate Aughterson provides readers with an approachable and fascinating critical guide to the dramatic works of an important seventeenth-century woman writer. Aughterson analyses Aphra Behn's abilities as a playwright, showing particularly how she skillfully employs comic and dramatic conventions to radical ends, and how she forces her audience to engage with issues about gender and sexuality whilst retaining her witty and accessible style. Chapters in the first part of the book provide close readings of the comedies, addressing such topics as openings, endings, character types, staging, and politics and society. In the second part, Aughterson not only examines Behn's literary career and the Restoration contexts of her plays, but also looks at some sample criticism and explores Behn's drama as performance.

"This collection of essays casts new light at Aphra Behn's poetry, drama, prose and literary criticism. The contributors analyse her creative response to the literary theories, genres and motifs of her age and point out remarkable analogies to the writings of her female successors, some of whom have not hitherto been viewed in relation to this Restoration pioneer of female authorship. Her influence on modern writers can still be felt in texts as diverse as Virginia Woolf's Orlando, Molly Brown's historical thriller set in Restoration England, and Joan Anim-Addo's adaptation of Oroonoko."--Publisher's description.

Aphra Behn (1640–1689), prolific and popular playwright, poet, novelist, translator, has a fascinating and extensive corpus of literature that plays a key role in literary history. Quantitative Literary Analysis of the Works of Aphra Behn: Words of Passion offers what no book has done to date, an analysis of all Behn’s literary output. It examines the author’s use of words in terms of frequencies and distributions and stacks the words in context to read Behn’s word usage synchronically. Using this experimental method, the book brings digital humanities into literary criticism, to enhance our understanding and appreciation of literature beyond what is possible in diachronic reading and scholarship less supported by digital means. The empirical approach works in collaboration with existing scholarship to understand Behn’s distinct language of love and extreme passions across her genres.

A clear introduction to the idea of the canon, exploring the process by which certain works, and not others, receive high cultural status. The work of Shakespeare and Aphra Behn is used to illustrate and challenge this process.

During the nineteen years of her play-writing career, Aphra Behn had far more new plays staged than anyone else. This book is the first to examine all her theatrical work. It explains her often dominant place in the complex theatrical culture of Charles II's reign, her divided political sympathies, and her interests as a free-thinking intellectual. It also reveals her as a brilliant theatrical practitioner, who used the seen as richly and significantly as the spoken.

Aphra Behn’s spectacular farce, Emperor of the Moon (1687), so engaged audiences that it was restaged well into the eighteenth century. Her play was largely adapted from Anne Mauduit de Fatouville’s Arlequin, Empereur dans la lune (1684), a commedia dell’arte production by the Comédie-Italienne troupe, a performance which also proved immensely popular with Parisian audiences. Within its witty and amusing three acts, Behn’s play explores a number of contemporary concerns — from commedia dell’arte, to gender and politics, to science and astronomy, including a plurality of worlds, for example — all culminating in the third act’s operatic spectacle. This volume offers a transcription of Behn’s 1687 play with extensive annotations, a critical discussion of Behn’s text, and the first English translation of Fatouville’s eight French and Italian scenes.

Aphra Behn (1640-1689) was one of the most successful dramatists of the Restoration theatre and a popular poet. This is the fourth volume in a set of seven which comprises a complete edition of all her works.

The first English woman to earn her living by her writing, the Restoration author Aphra Behn broke cultural barriers, serving as a literary role model for later generations of women authors. This comprehensive eBook presents Behn’s complete works, with numerous illustrations, informative introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1) * Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Behn’s life and works * Concise introductions to the novels and other texts * All 16 plays, with individual contents tables * Includes Behn’s pioneering novels * Images of how the books were first published, giving your eReader a taste of the Restoration texts * Excellent formatting of the texts * Includes Behn’s poetry - spend hours exploring the author’s diverse works * Features two biographies - discover Behn’s literary life * Scholarly ordering of texts into chronological order and literary genres Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles CONTENTS: The Plays THE FORC’D MARRIAGE THE AMOROUS PRINCE THE DUTCH LOVER ABDELAZER THE TOWN FOP THE ROVER, PART 1 AND PART 2 SIR PATIENT FANCY THE FEIGNED COURTESANS THE YOUNG KING THE FALSE COUNT THE ROUNDHEADS THE CITY HEIRESS THE LUCKY CHANCE THE WIDOW RANTER THE YOUNGER BROTHER THE EMPEROR OF THE MOON The Fiction THE FAIR JILT AGNES DE CASTRO LOVE-LETTERS BETWEEN A NOBLEMAN AND HIS SISTER OROONOKO MISCELLANEOUS FICTIONAL WORKS The Poetry THE POETRY OF APHRA BEHN The Biographies MEMOIR OF MRS. BEHN by Montague Summers AFRA BEHN by Edmund Gosse Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles or to purchase this eBook as a Parts Edition of individual eBooks