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Aphra Behn.
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English poet, novelist, and playwright Aphra Behn (ca. 1640-1689) was the first of her gender to earn a living as a writer in the English language.Aphra Behn was a successful author at a time when few...
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All women writers, observed Virginia Woolf in A Room of One's Own (1928), "ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds." The pr...
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Aphra Behn was one of the best and most successful comic writers in a great age of English comedy. If her plays are less polished than those of George Etherege and William Wycherley, it must be rememb...
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Aphra Behn, one of the most influential dramatists of the late seventeenth century, was also a celebrated poet and novelist. Her contemporary reputation was founded primarily on her "scandalous" plays...
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Woolf is one of the most prominent literary figures of twentieth-century English literature. Like her contemporary James Joyce, with whom she is often compared, Woolf is remembered as one of the most ...
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In the essay below, Kegan Gardiner maintains that Behn's work is imbued with eroticism, reflecting the author's belief that "sexual passion … [is the root of all social imp...
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Here, Goreau traces the critical and popular reaction to some of Behn's works, focusing especially on the writer's criticism of the "property-marriage system" in her plays....
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Below, Cotton studies the development of Behn's career and the course of critical reaction to her work.
Aphra Behn (c. 1640-89) was a hard-driving professional playwright, independent, bawdy, w...
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Duffy on the neglect of Behn:
Literary survival is largely a matter of fashion and chance. No greater gods preside over it and we deceive ourselves if we think they do, that we have a just appraisal o...
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Here, Gallagher focuses on The Lucky Chance, exploring how Behn "created a persona that skillfully intertwined the age's available discourses concerning women, property, selfhood and aut...
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In the following poem, Kendrick praises Behn in exalted terms, likening her to a goddess and declaring her verse superior to that of Orinda (Katherine Philips), Sappho, and even Ovid.
...
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In responding to a reader's question, the editor opines that Behn's poetry is uncannily similar in spirit to that of Sappho, and wishes that Behn had produced her own translation of Sapp...
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Vita Sackville-West was an English poet, novelist, biographer, and essayist. In the following excerpt, she judges whether Behn should more appropriately be considered a poet or a songwriter.
Much has ...
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An American educator specializing in English literature, Link has published editions of works by Behn, John Dryden, Hannah Cowley, and Walter Scott. In the following excerpt, he provides an overview o...
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In the following essay, Barash argues that Behn 's erotic poems contest "the heterosexual assumptions on which lovers' language is based. " Barash focuses primarily on the ...
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In the following excerpt, Duyfhuizen explicates the poem "The Willing Mistress" through comparisons to other verse by Behn and to her drama The Dutch Lover, finding that the poem is a me...
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In the following excerpt, Ballaster explores the relationship between Behn's poetry and her opinions about gender roles.
Behn's best-known attempt at self definition is her vindication o...
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An American critic and educator, Gardiner has published a study on the verse of English poet and dramatist Ben Jonson and has also contributed essays to several publications devoted to feminist critic...
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In the following excerpt, the critics assess the coherence and principles of the ostensibly feminist ideology presented in Behn's poem "The Golden Age. "
Recent feminist critiques...
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Aphra Behn
Aphra Behn
Critical Essay by Virginia Woolf
