The Passion of Oroonoko: Passive Obedience, The Royal Slave, and Aphra Behn's Baroque Realism

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Harol, Corinne

• The Passion of Oroonoko situatues Aphra Behn's novella Oroonoko (1689) within the context of debates about passive obedience and political obligation during the Revolution of 1688-9. It argues that Oroonoko leverages residual theories and forms of representing human action (baroque allegory, romance, patriarchal theories of obligation) against emergent ones (realism, novels, individuality) ultimately demonstrating that the natural fact (or natural law) of human passivity inevitability prevails.

• Date created

  2012

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Behn, Aphra
  • Race
  • Gender
  • England

• Type of Item

  Article (Published)

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3416TD3G

• License

  Copyright © 2012 Johns Hopkins University Press.