Abstract
ABSTRACT This paper investigates the stylistic means Behn employs to convey frenzied states of emotion in her prose narratives, and compares her writing to that of other authors of romance and amatory fiction in the period. Behn’s attitude to both libertine indulgence and psychomachia is equivocal, varying from text to text. Passion is at once a token of sublime sensibility and a (self-)destructive infatuation. The language of emotions in her narratives is not gendered: male and female characters alike indulge in emotional and behavioural excess. Her hyperbolic, breathless style and inchoate syntax seem to simulate the characters’ lack of passion control, but are ultimately exposed as consummate artifice. The real and the fake are inextricably intertwined. She occasionally punctuates her eroticised descriptions with humour, but also links sexual, religious and colonial desire, and voyeuristic pleasure by means of a highly sensuous style.
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