Dramatic and Narrative Techniques in the Novellas of Aphra Behn
2014; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 22; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/09699082.2014.941192
ISSN1747-5848
Autores Tópico(s)German Literature and Culture Studies
ResumoAbstractThe various ways in which Aphra Behn's prose works can be connected to her dramatic output have interested scholars of both Behn and seventeenth- and eighteenth-century prose fiction more generally in recent decades, in light of similarities in the staging of settings, thematic and characterization connections, and Behn's adaptation of dramatic scenes for her prose fiction. This article looks at three of her early novellas—“The Fair Jilt” (1688), “The History of the Nun” (1689) and “The Lucky Mistake” (1689)—and adds to existing scholarship by examining how Behn uses frame-breaking techniques and metalepses in a similar way to metatheatrical methods, blurring the lines between the world of the text and the world of the audience. The features that are examined include the prologue-like expositions (or pre-expositions) to her stories, described as such because of their philosophical preoccupations and lack of emphasis on traditional topics such as setting and character, as well as her employment of narrator comments, which, in Behn's hands, can act like asides in a play, focusing on character consciousness or providing narratorial commentary. This article also shows how mimetic techniques such as these are mixed with diegetic techniques such as focalization (narrative perspective) in order to demonstrate how Behn's novellas, like her plays, present plots driven by verbal artistry. Notes1 Kristiaan P. Aercke, “Theatrical Background in English Novels of the Seventeenth Century,” Journal of Narrative Technique 18.2 (1988): 120–36; Aleksondra Hultquist, Equal Ardor: Female Desire, Amatory Fiction, and the Recasting of the Novel, 1680–1760 (Ann Arbor, MI: ProQuest, 2011) 82 (and ch. 2 and 3 in general).2 Monika Fludernik, Towards a “Natural” Narratology (London: Routledge, 1996) 131.3 Fludernik 130.4 See Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, trans. Jane E. Lewin (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1983) 234–37.5 Aphra Behn, “The Fair Jilt,” The Works of Aphra Behn, ed. Janet Todd, 7 vols. (London: Pickering, 1992–96) 3: 1–48 (39). Subsequent references are to this edition and given parenthetically in the text by page number.6 Aphra Behn, The Forc'd Marriage; or, The Jealous Bridegroom. A Tragi-Comedy, Todd 5: 1–81 (5.2.172–75).7 Hultquist 64.8 Fludernik 140.9 Diana Solomon, Prologues and Epilogues of Restoration Theater: Gender and Comedy, Performance and Print (Newark: U of Delaware P, 2013) 7.10 These novellas have been chosen for discussion not only because of their use of dramatic techniques, but also because their authorship is not in question, unlike that of some of the other novellas often attributed to Behn.11 Fludernik 145.12 Fludernik 161.13 Fludernik 136.14 Aphra Behn, “The Lucky Mistake,” Todd 3: 165–203 (167). Subsequent references are to this edition and given parenthetically in the text by page number.15 Aphra Behn, The Feigned Courtesans, “The Rover” and Other Plays, ed. Jane Spencer (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008) 89–128 (1.1.1–20).16 Aercke 129.17 Jane Spencer discusses the connection between Behn and Southerne in Aphra Behn's Afterlife (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000) 127–34.18 Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2002) 111. See, as just one example, Behn's stage direction in Sir Patient Fancy (1678), in which she has Sir Credulous put “himself into a ready Posture as if he would speak, but onely makes faces”. Aphra Behn, Sir Patient Fancy: A Comedy, Todd 6: 1–81 (1.1.343, stage directions).19 Seymour Chatman, Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1990) 38.20 For example, in the opening scene of The Rover (1677), Hellena tells her sister Florinda, “That blush betrays you”, when she is quizzing her about her affections for Don Belvile. See Aphra Behn, The Rover; or, The Banish't Cavaliers, Todd 5: 451–521 (1.1.16).21 Derek Hughes, The Theatre of Aphra Behn (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001) 2.22 Aercke 124.23 Aercke 126.24 Hughes 13.25 Aercke 121.26 Fludernik 142.27 Fludernik 151, 145.28 Fludernik 146.29 Hultquist 89.30 Whereas I see the story mixing techniques from Restoration drama and seventeenth-century prose forms, such as the French heroic romance, Jacqueline Pearson suggests that: “The tale moves provocatively between heroic romance and a kind of epic satire”. Jacqueline Pearson, “The Short Fiction (excluding Oroonoko),” The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn, ed. Derek Hughes and Janet Todd (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004) 188–203 (197).31 Fludernik 148, 150.32 Aercke 127.33 Behn, Forc'd Marriage 55 (4.4.22 and 4.5.1, stage directions).34 Jacqueline Pearson, “Gender and Narrative in the Fiction of Aphra Behn,” Review of English Studies 42.165 (1991): 40–56 (50).35 Solomon 53.36 Pearson, “Short Fiction” 197.37 Gérard Genette describes metalepses as “transgressions [… that] play on the double temporality of the story and the narrating” (235).38 Solomon 7.39 Behn, The Rover 520 (lines 34–35, 38–39). As Janet Todd points out, “[t]here was a vogue for abusing the audiences in prologues”, and fops were a key target, as they often inhabited the pit that is right in front of the forestage. Janet Todd, ed., “Notes,” Todd 5: 522–70 (523). Paul McCallum writes that: “no single group of consumers in the theatre attracted greater attention or excited more anxiety among writers of prologues and epilogues than those seated just before and below the proscenium—that is, in the Pit. Gathered on its benches were those who passed for the London intelligentsia, gentlemen of wit and fashion, members of the Inns of Court, amateur versifiers and critics apprenticed in the town's chocolate and coffee-houses”. Paul McCallum, “Cozening the Pit: Prologues, Epilogues, and Poetic Authority in Restoration England,” Prologues, Epilogues, Curtain-Raisers, and Afterpieces: The Rest of the Eighteenth-Century London Stage, ed. Daniel J. Ennis and Judith Bailey Slagle (Newark: U of Delaware P, 2007) 33–69 (34).40 Aphra Behn, The Young King; or, The Mistake, Todd 7: 83–151 (85, lines 32–35).41 Pearson, “Short Fiction” 193.42 Here, I disagree with Warren Chernaik's statement that: “What is strikingly absent from both The Fair Jilt and The History of the Nun is any psychological dimension in the presentation of the ‘fatal beauty’ and her string of victims”. Warren Chernaik, Sexual Freedom in Restoration Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995) 154.43 Pearson describes Miranda as “a larger-than-life romantic figure fresh from the heroic play and conceived in terms of exaggeration and overstatement” (“Short Fiction” 195).44 For information on the formal techniques of the French heroic romance, see Paul Salzman, English Prose Fiction, 1558–1700: A Critical History (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985) 177–89.45 Fludernik 153, 158. For her analysis of speech representation, see Fludernik 144.46 Hultquist 85.47 Fludernik discusses “The History of the Nun” and what she calls the “consciousness scene” (153–57).48 Aphra Behn, “The History of the Nun,” Todd 3: 208–58 (249). Subsequent references are to this edition and given parenthetically in the text by page number.49 Aphra Behn, Abdelazer; or, The Moor's Revenge: A Tragedy, Todd 5: 245–315 (3.1.173).50 Pearson, “Gender and Narrative” 50.51 Pearson, “Short Fiction” 193.52 J.L. Styan, Restoration Comedy in Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986) 205.53 Janet Todd, ed., introduction, Todd 3: vii–xviii (x).Additional informationNotes on contributorsJoanna Fowler Joanna Fowler is a lecturer at Loughborough University, UK. Her work focuses on voice and perspective in the prose fiction of the eighteenth-century author Eliza Haywood, and she has published on this subject.
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