Oroonoko Critical Essay | Critical Essay by David E. Hoegberg

Critical Essay by David E. Hoegberg

SOURCE: "Caesar's Toils: Allusion and Rebellion in Oroonoko," in Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 7, No. 3, April, 1995, pp. 239–58.

In the essay below, Hoegberg explores the idea of power struggle in Oroonoko, noting Behn's allusions to Achilles and Julius Caesar.

But those who came prepared for the business enclosed him on every side, with their naked daggers in their hands. Which way soever he turned he met with blows, and saw their swords levelled at his face and eyes, and was encompassed, like a wild beast in the toils, on every side.¹

Plutarch's "Life of Caesar"

Included in the new sixth edition of the Norton Anthology of English Literature, Aphra Behn's Oroonoko has passed a literary milestone, raising anew the question of how it fits into and plays against the literary "canon" it is more and more coming to inhabit. While Oroonoko's literary indebtedness has...
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