Aphra Behn: pastoral poet

Abstract

In the hands of Aphra Behn (1640-89), the inherently imitative genre of the pastoral assumes interesting dimensions. The artificiality of the golden age and the stock dramatic action of one-dimensional nymphs and swains are enlivened and given depth as she manipulates convention to produce a strikingly different kind of verse. Sexual and political authority appear to overlap in her poems and a host of subversive women's stories emerge, featuring powerful heroines equipped not only with sexual and political, but also authorial power. Her pastorals offer a powerful revision of the pastoral in terms of constructing a space for the articulation of female desire and also for their challenges to heteronormativity in the pastoral tradition and in culture at large. Behn's style explores female sexuality, relationships, politics, marriage, and social issues from a personal and intimate perspective, and lends insight into the creative mind and life of the Restoration female poet.Aphra Behn (1640-89) was a pastoral poet; she wrote over 40 pastoral poems that appear in her own collections and those of others. Although several critics have discussed aspects of her use of the pastoral form and mode, none have approached Behn's overall career as that of a pastoral poet [1], and this absence of sustained attention needs redress.[2] Behn made credible contributions to the form that differ from those of her male contemporaries. Specific points of departure in her employment and creation of the pastoral include her thematic range and variety, the complication of the pastoral narrative and its figures, and the frequency of pastoral conventions in her poetry. In Behn's hands, this inherently imitative genre assumes interesting dimensions as a host of subversive women's stories emerge, featuring powerful heroines equipped not only with sexual and political, but also authorial power. Behn uses the form of the pastoral for self-exploration, dramatisation, and expression, and her pastorals offer a powerful revision of the pastoral in terms of constructing a space for the articulation of female desire and also for their challenges to heteronormativity in the pastoral tradition and in culture at large.

Aphra Behn and the Verse Epistle

“…But it also enables Behn to set out an alternative system of values that she frames here and elsewhere, as in "To Mrs. Price", as feminine. 42 The fourth main change that Behn makes to the situation presented in Ovid is twofold. who had stooped to marry him and who, in her eyes, is not his inferior even after his royal status has been discovered.…”