![]() ![]() ![]() Perhaps unique among literary creations, Oroonoko and his entourage, with their distinctive race, class and gender attributes, came into popular consciousness as tropes gauging important shifts in English values during the course of the transatlantic slave trade. ![]() All eight essays address elements in the evolution of Oroonoko, from Behn's 1688 novella to Southerne's 1696 dramatic adaptation, and thence to the adaptations by Hawkesworth (1759), Gentleman (1760), Anonymous (1760), Ferriar (1788), Bellamy (1789) and Bandele (1999), who serially expropriated the play as a platform to debate responsibility in matters of slavery and colonialism. The collection initiates just such an in-depth and focused analysis of the complex literary and social history of the royal slave Oroonoko. This volume of essays invites the reader to assess literary texts from within the frame of the texts' cultural history, which includes issues of authorship and literary or stage convention as well as the social and political institutions that shaped and marketed that literature. ![]()
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