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Amigos w/ Common Interests
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Category: People |
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Variety is the soul of pleasure.
~ Aphra Behn (1640? - 1689)
from Wikipedia (online):
Aphra Behn has been unjustly called "the female Rochester." While she was best known publicly for her drama (in the 1670s, only Dryden's plays were staged more often than hers), she wrote a great deal of poetry that would be the basis of her later reputation.
Edward Bysshe would include numerous quotes from her verse in his Art of English Poetry (see online text at UVA). While her poetry was occasionally sexually frank, it was never as graphic or intentionally lurid and titillating as Rochester's. Rather, her poetry was, like the court's ethos, playful and honest about sexual desire.
One of the most remarkable aspects of Behn's success in court poetry, however, is that Behn was herself a commoner. She had no more relation to peers than Dryden, and possibly quite a bit less. As a woman, a commoner, and Kentish, she is remarkable for her success in moving in the same circles as the King (King Charles II) himself.
She was likely a spy for the Royalist side during the Interregnum, and she was certainly a spy for Charles II in the Second Anglo-Dutch War, but she had neither exceptional beauty nor any wealth at all (indeed, she may have spent time in debtor's prison), and her ability to write poetry that stands among the best of the age gives some lie to the notion that the Restoration was an age of female illiteracy and verse composed and read only by peers.
Portrait:
Aphra Behn, "the first female professional author in English," not many years before her death.
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My Favorites
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focuspuller
Jan 11, 2007
Sea Cliff, Long Island,, NY
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squeegee
Jan 10, 2007
Dallas, TX
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apuntes
Jan 10, 2007
Amsterdam, Netherlands
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aebas
Jan 09, 2007
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
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