Aphra Behn and the royal slave Oroonoko

Abstract

The question of whether the 1 7th-century English novelist and playwright Aphra Behn (1640-1689) ever visited Suriname, and whether her novel Oroonoko: or , The Royal Slave. A True History is based on her own experiences in that country, has exercised the minds of numerous writers. In the course of time both negative and positive answers have been given, and the matter has given rise to heated controversy among literary historians. Although it now seems probable that Aphra Behn spent some time in Suriname and that her novel Oroonoko is not pure fiction, there are still many questions to be answered concerning this remarkable woman. Unfortunately, the two recent biographies under review leave many of them unresolved. The inaugural volume of this journal (then called De WestIndische Gids) included both a full translation of Oroonoko into Dutch and a short biographical article by H.D. Benjamins (1919) which pointed to its importance for the literary history of Suriname: Oroonoko is the oldest romantic story that has Suriname as its setting. In a subsequent volume of the journal, in reaction to two pamphlets written by the American professor Ernest Bern-