“[N]umberless wonders”: The Oscillation between Wonder and Sympathy in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko
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This essay addresses the critical disagreement over the boundaries of sympathy in Oroonoko. Depending on the scope of sympathy, Oroonoko has been described as both a proto-abolitionist text and a proto- colonial document. Rather than placing the text in these two opposing categories, this article suggests that Aphra Behn’s rhetorical technique of bringing two contrasting emotions, wonder and sympathy, into the realm of reading practice fundamentally renders the spectrum of sympathy indeterminable. Behn endeavors to reconcile wonder and sympathy, despite their conceptual differences, by redefining what is seemingly extraordinary and wondrous as familiar, relatable, and thus sympathetic. This strategy, while obscuring the boundary of sympathy, still informs Behn’s engagement with constructing her text. She invites her readers to turn wonder into a ground for sympathy, but also creates a contradiction at the center of her project, where for Oroonoko to be made familiar, he needs to be conceived as aesthetically marvelous.
Abstract
This essay addresses the critical disagreement over the boundaries of sympathy in Oroonoko. Depending on the scope of sympathy, Oroonoko has been described as both a proto-abolitionist text and a proto- colonial document. Rather than placing the text in these two opposing categories, this article suggests that Aphra Behn’s rhetorical technique of bringing two contrasting emotions, wonder and sympathy, into the realm of reading practice fundamentally renders the spectrum of sympathy indeterminable. Behn endeavors to reconcile wonder and sympathy, despite their conceptual differences, by redefining what is seemingly extraordinary and wondrous as familiar, relatable, and thus sympathetic. This strategy, while obscuring the boundary of sympathy, still informs Behn’s engagement with constructing her text. She invites her readers to turn wonder into a ground for sympathy, but also creates a contradiction at the center of her project, where for Oroonoko to be made familiar, he needs to be conceived as aesthetically marvelous.
참고문헌 (19)
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