Piety and Puritanism in the Plays of the Poetess-Punk Aphra Behn

<p>This project consists of five stand-alone essays explicating religious themes within the following of Aphra Behn's plays: The Lucky Chance, The Feigned Courtesans, The Rover, The Emperor of the Moon, and The Widdow Ranter; Or The History of Bacon in Virginia. Since the feminist recovery of her works in the late twentieth century, Behn has become a popular subject of inquiry among gender critics who celebrate her for her sensationalized, and possibly fictionalized, biography and her protofeminist themes. Because of these—her biography and her protofeminism—critics have tended to divorce her work from the historical religious context in which it was written. Indeed, Puritanical religious views do seem incongruent with Behn's scandalous biography and apparent gender ideology. The project successfully views these five plays through a more complete historical context of the religious culture of seventeenth-century England, thus demonstrating that Behn was far less an anomaly and far more a product of her time and place than commonly believed.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts in English

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Year

2011

Author dc:creator

• Smith, Magi Ida

Contributors dc:contributor

• Etta Madden

• Aphra Behn
• Puritanism
• restoration theatre
• Protestantism
• Christianity
• wits
• Libertines
• Royalist
• patriarchy
• English Language and Literature

Statement dc:rights

• © Magi Ida Smith

Repository record dc:identifier

https://bearworks.missouristate.edu/theses/1116

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:bearworks.missouristate.edu:theses-2117