Reading Overview for Wednesday, July 7

Assigned Texts: Oroonoko (NA 927-47)

Yesterday’s overview gave you some background on the author of Oroonoko, Aphra Behn, but this prose narrative is quite different from her poem “The Disappointment.” Since we didn’t discuss Behn in class, please look back at yesterday’s post for details and background about her.

As the introduction to Behn in the NA suggests, this text is somewhat difficult to categorize mostly because it is shorter than a novel and unclear whether it’s real or fiction. Behn was in Suriname, a sugar colony in the northern part of South America, in the 1660s, so it’s likely that the story is based, in some part, on real events. Still, the narrative appears to exaggerate her social position as a visitor to the colony and likely enhances other details. This, combined with some of the other details, means that we cannot read the first-person narrator telling the story as Behn herself though she drew on some actual experiences. Behn wrote this text late in her career, and it was popular enough to have been rewritten a number of times in the decades after Behn’s publication of it. Here is a map that indicates three main locations: England (or 'old world'), Coramantien (in modern-day Ghana), and Surinam (now known as Suriname).

Oroonoko takes up the important issue of slavery and centers on a black male hero. As the NA introduction explains, the narrative incorporates the qualities of three genres:

• the memoir: the narrator’s descriptions describe a significant first-hand experience
• the travel narrative: the action and characters move between Africa, the ‘new world’ in the west, and the ‘old world’ of Europe
• biography: the narrative tells the life story of the protagonist and titular character Oroonoko

As you begin reading, I’ll warn you that parts of Oroonoko are shocking and horrifying, but these aspects are very important in Behn’s descriptions of the impact of slavery in her lifetime.

Questions for Thinking and Discussion

• Based on the first half of Oroonoko, what do you think is the narrator’s opinion of slavery? Is she clearly against it? Is she ambivalent?
• Do you see Oroonoko as honorable? What does he do that would make him honorable? dishonorable? Why?
• Before the actual story starts around the middle of page 930, the narrator gives some background on her experience and on the slave trade as well as on the natives living in the ‘new world’. What is the effect of these introductory sections? Of the description of her experience on the bottom of page 927 and the top of 928? Of the description of the current situation around the ‘new world’ and slave trade on pages 928 through 930?
• Which character do you find most sympathetic through the first half of the story: Oroonoko, the King, Imoinda, the narrator, or someone else? Why? Who do you find least sympathetic? Why?