Aphra Behn, Poems

Sarah Prescott*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

    Abstract / Description of output

    The three most significant of Behn's collections of poetry are Poems Upon Several Occasions: with a Voyage to the Island of Love (1684), Miscellany, Being a Collection of Poems By several Hands (1685) and Lycidus, or The Lover in Fashion ... Together with a Miscellany of new Poems By Several Hands (1688). The versatility and adaptability that Behn displays throughout her work is continued in her poetry where she plays with a number of personae, poetic voices and subject positions. In political terms Behn was a Stuart supporter and her work displays her implicit acceptance of a political system that was hierarchical and based on absolute monarchy. Her public odes to Charles and James - A Pindarick on the Death of Charles II and A Pindarick Poem on the Happy Coronation - clearly mark her as a Stuart apologist and propagandist; a position that is also apparent in the prologues and epilogues to her plays. However, in her less public poetry Behn's political position is - as we find in much Restoration political poetry and discourse - articulated through the imagery of a 'golden age' or pastoral world which symbolizes loyalty to the Stuart monarchs. Behn's use of a mythical age of prelapsarian social and sexual freedom to denote a celebration of Stuart power is clearly shown in her poem 'The Golden Age'. In this poem, the speaker looks back to an age of undisturbed rural innocence where nature reflects the ideal political state: 'Calm was the Air, no Winds blew fast and loud, / The Skie was dark'ned with no sullen Cloud'. In Behn's fiction broken amatory vows often signify political disloyalty and perfidious lovers suggest deceitful courtiers. In contrast, but by the same token, Behn's 'Golden Age' is a world where there is a constant devotion between swain and nymph. It is a world which sees no shame in sexual passion: 'The Lovers thus, thus uncontroul'd did meet, / Thus all their Joyes and Vowes of Love repeat: / Joyes which were everlasting, ever new / And every Vow inviolably true'. These tropes of Stuart loyalty are continued in 'A Farewell to Celladon, On His Going into Ireland' where Celladon is figured simultaneously as the ideal rural swain and perfect loyal subject: 'The great, the Godlike Celladon, / Unlike the base Examples of the times, / Could never be Corrupted, never won, / To stain his blood with Rebel Crimes'. Accordingly, Celladon's loyalty to his king [Caesar/Charles] on his arrival in Ireland is figured in terms of pastoral bliss and the Irish nymphs are enjoined to soothe the anxieties of Celladon's political 'business'. The 'soft tale of Love' whispered by the amorous nymph mingles with the sound of bird-song and the 'distant bleating of the Herds' to create a 'Music far more ravishing and sweet, / Than all the Artful Sounds that please the noisy Great'. Celladon's imagined engagement with these pastoral joys is used as evidence of his political virtue and signifies his status as an exemplar 'Of Honour, Friendship, Loyalty and Love'.

    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationA Companion to Literature from Milton to Blake
    EditorsDavid Womersley
    PublisherWiley-Blackwell
    Chapter19
    Pages224-231
    Number of pages8
    ISBN (Electronic)9781405165327
    ISBN (Print)9780631212850
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Jan 2001

    Publication series

    NameBlackwell Companions to Literature and Culture
    PublisherWiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd

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