Oroonoko

Book Description
When Prince Oroonoko’s passion for the virtuous Imoinda arouses the jealousy of his grandfather, the lovers are cast into slavery and transported from Africa to the colony of Surinam. Oroonoko’s noble bearing soon wins the respect of his English captors, but his struggle for freedom brings about his destruction. Inspired by Aphra Behn’s visit to Surinam, Oroonoko reflects the author’s romantic views of native peoples as being in "the first state of innocence, before man knew how to sin." The novel also reveals Behn’s ambiguous attitude toward slavery: while she favored it as a means to strengthen England’s power, her powerful and moving work conveys its injustice and brutality.

Card catalog description
"Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, the story of an African prince's enslavement by British colonists and his journey from West Africa to the Caribbean, is the first literary work in English to portray the global interactions of that interlocking structure that came to be known as "the triangular trade." This edition features a generous selection of thematically organized historical materials that illuminate the three corners of the Atlantic triangle: West Africa, the Caribbean, and Europe. Excerpts from contemporary literary works by Ben Jonson, John Dryden, Richard Steele, and Daniel Defoe enrich our understanding of the literary contexts for Behn's portrayal of "blackness" in Oroonoko, and selections from later dramatizations of Oroonoko demonstrate the evolution of British attitudes toward racial difference in the century following the publication of Behn's work."--BOOK JACKET.

About the Author
Aphra Behn (c. 1640–1689), born in Kent, England, claimed to have visited the British colony of Surinam, where Oroonoko is set. She wrote poetry, short stories, stage plays, and political propaganda for the Tory party, as well as her great amorous and political novel, Love Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister. Janet Todd is Francis Hutcheson Professor of English Literature at the University of Glasgow and an honorary fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge.


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Including the full text of Aphra Behn's novella , this volume explores its global historical context through a number of literary, philosophical, and historical texts designed to place the work in a literary history as well as a relational history of the three regions the story unites: West Africa, The Caribbean, and England. Documents from each corner of the "Triangular Trade," such as slave trader correspondence, travel accounts from Surinam, and legal decisions concerning slavery in England, combine to add to the richness of this earliest literary narrative written in English about an American colony. Gallagher is an English literature professor at the U. of California, Berkeley. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)


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