SOURCE: "The Political Possibilities of Desire: Teaching the Erotic Poems of Behn," in Teaching Eighteenth-Century Poetry, edited by Christopher Fox, AMS Press, 1990, pp. 159-76.

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 poem "The Disappointment."

I have taught the erotic poems of Aphra Behn (ca. 1640-1689) in Restoration and eighteenth-century survey courses, in courses about Augustan poetry, and in surveys of literature by women. I usually assign "The Disappointment," "To the fair Clarinda who made Love to me, imagin'd more than Woman" and "On Desire. A Pindarick" as a group, with either the Earl of Rochester's erotic poems or poetry by other Restoration women for comparison….

Students usually love Behn's poetry; and I begin by asking them why. Since part of my point in teaching these poems is to show...