WPC 2S ZB 0Xx6X@KX@Ыx6X@KX@<6X9`(CourierX2#|xOroonoko: A Survey of Current Criticism When Aphra Behn's Oroonoko: or, The Royal Slave was published in 1688, it achieved an almost instant popularity, and succeeding centuries did little to diminish the reading public's regard for the novel or its fascination with the details of Behn's biography. Yet, the literary community evinced little interest in any of Behn's writing for over two hundred years; in fact, she and her works were considered morally depraved by Alexander Pope and William Wycherley, to name just two. As we shall see, when critical attention finally did turn to Behn's Oroonoko, it was hardly complimentary. However, the tide has turned, and positive scholarly commentary on Oroonoko has escalated in recent years, with the major critical disputes of the last decade animated by issues of gender, race, and class in the novel. The bulk of the criticism has been of a theoretically hybrid nature, a blend of feminism and new historicism (or its British cousin, cultural materialism). In the interest of brevity, I will hereafter refer to this theoretical bent as "feminist-new historicist" criticism. How has Oroonoko been viewed in the past? From its publication until the early twentieth century, the novel was generally considered by readers first a heroic love story, then a sentimental narrative, and then an abolitionist statement. However, in 1913, PMLA published Ernest Bernbaum's article "Mrs. Behn's Biography a Fiction," and all other considerations of the novel became overshadowed by debate over the historical authenticity of the events its narrator recounts. It was not until George Guffey's 1974 article "Aphra Behn's Oroonoko: Occasion and Accomplishment," a political reading of the enslaved Oroonoko as representative of the beleaguered James II, that literary critics began to take Oroonoko seriously. Whether or not the novel presents a factual account of events witnessed in Suriname by a youthful Aphra Behn is not now the question. That controversy was turned squarely on its head by post-Guffey critics, who question instead why it has been considered necessary to attack or defend Behn's veracity. As Robert L. Chibka remarks, ". . . [I]t is hard to imagine an article concerning whether Defoe lived in goatskins near the mouth of the Oroonoko river entitled, 'New Evidence of the Realism of Mr. Defoe's Robinson Crusoe'" (512). With a few minor exceptions, current commentators operate on the assumption that the question of the novel's "realism" is irrelevant. Following the publication of Guffey's essay, critical interest in Oroonoko increased dramatically, and a scholarly edition of the novel seemed a necessity. Nevertheless, it was not until early 1995 that the Ohio State University Press released such a definitive text as part of a multi-volume set, The Works of Aphra Behn, edited by Janet Todd, a prominent feminist critic and the author of The Sign of Angellica: Women, Writing and Fiction, 1660-1800 (New York: Columbia UP, 1989). The publication not only fills the demand for an authoritative edition of Oroonoko, but also makes its author's other works easily accessible, facilitating examinations of the novel in the context of the Behn corpus.  Feminist-new historicists publishing on Oroonoko have been inspired by African-American studies scholars Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Anthony Appiah and by Marxist Raymond Williams' observations on class. The influence of post-colonial critics, including Homi K Bhabha, Edward Said, Frantz Fanon and Mary Louise Pratt, may also be seen in some of the feminist-new historicists' analyses of the novel. However, the predominant methodological strategy being utilized by those surveying this territory is, by far, an approach predicated on third-world feminist Gayatri Spivak's theoretical formulations and a painstaking brand of literary analysis she designates "critique." This approach is exemplified by the work of Laura Brown, Margaret Ferguson, and Rosalind Ballaster. Fortunately, a common theoretical foundation does not translate into mutual agreement among critics; this is never so well demonstrated as in the case of Oroonoko. The polemics of race and gender have fueled several disparate arguments in the feminist-new historicist camp. In Laura Brown's pioneering exposition, Oroonoko is "a model for the mutual interaction of the positions of the oppressed in the literary discourse of its own age" in which political readings of race and gender reflect one another (43). Brown's discussion provides an opening for the exploration of subsequent analyses of the novel's intersecting race and gender concerns, arguments which have exacerbated the contention between feminist-new historicist scholars. Brown herself has been censured, most notably by Margaret Ferguson, for juxtaposing figures of race-as-slave with gender-as-woman, thereby conflating the "other other," Imoinda, with the white narrator (1991 173). Other sorts of historicists have performed similar theoretical operations excluding the figure of the black woman; Foucauldian Heidi Hutner, for example, de-genders and absorbs both Oroonoko and Imoinda into the figure of race-as-slave while extolling the "female truth-telling" of the (white) narrator (45). To rectify what they judge at best a critical oversight on the part of their feminist-new historicist colleagues, Ferguson, Rosalind Ballaster, and others writing on Oroonoko have taken pains to balance their theoretical equations with the figure of the black woman, emphasizing instead conflict within the gender. Ballaster, for instance, equates Oroonoko's narrator with modern white feminist critics who "objectify and displace" their own suffering upon a black female "icon" (1992 293-94), while Ferguson elucidates a competition between the narrator and Imoinda over "Oroonoko's body and its power to engender something in the future"--a child or a book (1991 170). The pursuit, as it were, of Imoinda, has remained in vogue for several years. Most recently, Charlotte Sussman has made the case that the narrator romanticizes Imoinda's plight and self-sacrifice in order to better construct her own feminine, "individualist" literary ethos (230). Tangentially, critics of all schools continue to ask if the novel takes a discernibly emancipationist stance. Unquestionably, abolitionists thought so, and they utilized Oroonoko for the furtherance of the anti-slavery movement. However, in recent years, the assumption that the novel speaks out against slavery has disintegrated. G. A. Starr, examining Oroonoko from the position of genre theory, characterizes the novel's depiction of slavery as one of a "regretful shrug" at an unpleasant but unassailable institution (366), while feminist-new historicist Anne Fogarty maintains that the portrayal of slavery in the novel actually serves as a metaphorical protest against gender and class oppressions. In addition, Anita Pacheco's discursive analysis endorses position currently applauded by many, asserting that the novel endorses an aristocratic ideology which, far from being abolitionist, sees slavery as offensive only when it oppresses nobility. Discussions of aristocratic ideologies and other class issues in Oroonoko are usually not well articulated by the feminist-new historicists. Instead, these concerns are usually subsumed by the problems of race and gender. Thus, it is difficult to demarcate criticism in this area. However, whatever their theoretical preferences, critics almost invariably take a stab at a related dispute whose origins actually predate modern criticism, the contention over whether or not the representation of the "royal slave" Oroonoko is the Tory Behn's sympathetic allusion to the tumultuous Stuart monarchy. While many critics now accept this assumption, which Stuart is being alluded to, and the function of the allusion in the novel are open to debate. We have already observed Guffey's correlation of Oroonoko with James II. In addition, feminist-new historicist Laura Brown sees parallels between Oroonoko and Charles I, both victims of "antiabsolutist mercantile imperialism" (59), while her colleague Moira Ferguson, on the other hand, suggests that Oroonoko represents Charles II. The king's refusal to pay for her undercover work had left Behn imprisoned, and Ferguson believes that Behn is engaging in an act of "deft revenge" by portraying the humiliation of a prince (47). Finally, poststructuralist Catherine Gallagher differs from her predecessors in viewing Oroonoko as representative not only of absolute kingship, but also of the related concepts of property rights and literary exchange. Such suppositions are batted about repeatedly, each critic devising a more elaborate explanation for his or her favorite theory. Therefore, it is doubtful that this debate, while it seems to entertain critics, has anything left to offer at present. In an intriguing sidetrack, several scholars, including feminist-new historicists Margaret Ferguson and Mary Vermillion, have also approached Oroonoko by way of Thomas Southerne's dramatic adaptation of Behn's novel. Treatments of the drama in comparison to its source reveal eighteenth century attitudes toward interracial relationships and female authorship. Since Southerne's version and later playwrights' redactions of it played on the British stage into the early nineteenth century, a cultural study which continues to engage the triad of race, class, and gender in Oroonoko and its dramatic adaptations may yield worthwhile results. What, for example, might we make of this complaint made by a planter on his way to a slave auction in John Hawkesworth's revisions to Southerne's text: "Aye, in truth a Christian Colony has a hard time of it, that is forced to deal in this cursed heathen Commodity"? What other developments might we see in criticism of Oroonoko in the next decade? It is not inaccurate to say that the feminist new-historicists have wrung the novel dry of further possibilities in their field. Where, then, may the investigation be taken? It may here be productive to describe briefly other interpretive strategies which have been taken by Oroonoko critics. Overshadowed by the feminist-new historicists, a few brave scholars have ventured on lone excursions into uncharted theoretical seas. While some, such as Catherine Gallagher and Beverle Houston, have taken semiotic and psychoanalytic approaches to Oroonoko, their interpretations have not generated further critical analyses along these lines. While there is certainly ample material to justify further such criticism, these theoretical bases do not appear to be particularly popular. On the other hand, the increased interest in rhetoric in the academy suggests that the outlook is more favorable for discourse analysts and speech act theorists like Anita Pacheco or Robert Chibka. What, for instance, could be said about the Christian and anti-Christian rhetoric running simultaneously through the text? What can should we make of the Epistle Dedicatory of the novel, addressed to Lord Maitland? Similarly, Behn's use of heroic allusions has been aptly dissected by David Hoegberg, and her use of Biblical allusions somewhat less adequately by Robert A. Erickson. Other in-depth surveys of literary allusions in Oroonoko might certainly be pursued. Finally, the more strictly post-colonial critic Diane Roberts chooses to focus on gender distinctions projected by the narrator onto the figure of race-as-slave, embodied separately by Oroonoko and Imoinda. Again, there is certainly room for more post-colonial elucidation of the text, particularly touching on the class issues about which the feminist-new historicists have been so vague. Whatever the critical approaches taken, we may be sure that interpretations of Oroonoko will continue to arouse lively debate. Bibliography of Recent Criticism on Aphra Behn's Oroonoko The majority of critical works cited span the years 1980 to 1995. The editions cited are based either on the original first edition of the text or on its reprint in Three Histories. Both the edition and the reprint were released in 1688. Beneath each heading items are arranged chronologically. Bibliographies O'Donnell, Mary Ann. Aphra Behn: An Annotated Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources. New York: Garland, 1986. Extensive survey of 106 primary and 661 secondary titles catalogues and annotates material from 1671 through 1985. Lynch, Jack. "An Annotated Bibliography on Aphra Behn's Oroonoko." 19 September 1994. Online posting. URL: http://www.english.upenn.edu/ ^jlynch/behn.html. World Wide Web. Accessed 27 August 1995. Catalogues and annotates 47 primary and secondary titles, most published since 1985. Does not include bibliographical or textual studies, reviews, or more obscure publications. First Edition Oroonoko: or, The Royal Slave. A True History. By Mrs. A. Behn. London: Printed for William Canning, 1688. Three Histories. Vis. I. Oroonoko: or, The Royal Slave. II. The Fair Jilt: or, Tarquin and Miranda. III. Agnes de Castro: or, the Force of Generous Love. By Mrs. A. Behn. London: Printed for William Canning, 1688. Reissue. Critical Editions Duffy, Maureen, ed. Oroonoko and Other Stories. London: Methuen, 1986. Edited by the author of the popular Behn biography The Passionate Shepherdess (1977). Amore, Adelaide P., ed. Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave: A Critical Edition. Lanham, MD: University Presses of America, 1987. The least useful edition published in the past fifteen years. Only eighteen woefully cursory footnotes are provided for the entire text. Amore's Eurocentric introduction, plagued by errors such as the use of "gentile" to mean "genteel," observes that the noble but uncivilized Oroonoko "intuitively seeks those aspects of western man that through history have made him great and virtuous." Based on the original first edition. Salzman, Paul, ed. Oroonoko, and Other Writings. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994.  Presently the standard classroom edition. Editor Paul Salzman is the author of English Prose Fiction 1558-1700 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985), in which his opinion of the novel is not particularly positive. Based on the original first edition. Todd, Janet, ed. The Fair Jilt and Other Short Stories. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1995. Vol. 3 of The Works of Aphra Behn. 4 vols. to date. 1992-. Excellent scholarly edition, augmented by more than one hundred extensive footnotes. The textual introduction to the volume provides a brief history of the the novel's impact on early eighteenth-century literary culture in both Britain and France, including some commentary on dramatic adaptations of the novel. Editor Janet Todd is a prominent feminist authority on eighteenth century British women writers. Based on the Three Histories reprint of the first edition. Books on Behn Goreau, Angeline. Reconstructing Aphra: A Social Biography of Aphra Behn. New York: Dial, 1980. Styles Behn a feminist heroine and accepts the conception of Oroonoko as an abolitionist work in which savage nobility is contrasted to the decadence of European civilization. Behn's life is placed aptly in the socio-historical context of late seventeenth-century Britain, although some chapters are highly conjectural. Woodcock, George. Aphra Behn: The English Sappho. New York: Black Rose Books, 1989. This reprint of the anarchist critic Woodcock's The Incomparable Aphra (1948) includes a new introduction. Hunter, Heidi, ed. Rereading Aphra Behn: History, Theory, and Criticism. Charlottesville, UP of Virginia, 1993. This thirteen essay collection touches on points throughout Behn's career and is a useful companion for the Ohio State University Press Works of Aphra Behn. Includes two essays on Oroonoko, annotated below. Articles and Book ChaptersGuffey, George. "Aphra Behn's Oroonoko: Occasion and Accomplishment." Two English Novelists: Aphra Behn and Anthony Trollope: Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, May 11, 1974. Los Angeles: Clark Library, 1975. 3-41. Groundbreaking political reading of the novel rejects previous abolitionist readings. Instead, presents parallels between royalist Behn's representation of the "royal slave" and James II. Spengemann, William. "The Earliest American Novel: Aphra Behn's Oroonoko." Nineteenth-Century Literature 38 (1984): 384-414. Article unavailable. Houston, Beverle. "Usurpation and Dismemberment: Oedipal Tyranny in Oroonoko." Literature and Psychology 32 (1986): 30-36. Psychoanalytic interpretation which demonstrates, somewhat predictably, how the Oedipal Oroonoko is victimized by various father-figures. Although lacking sufficient development, the subsequent evaluation of Oroonoko as the female narrator's repressed fantasy of the "androgynous self-as-destroyed-hero" is worth noting. Brown, Laura. "The Romance of Empire: Oroonoko and the Trade in Slaves." The New Eighteenth Century: Theory , Politics, English Literature, ed. Felicity Nussbaum and Laura Brown. New York: Methuen, 1987. 41-61. Utilizes the critical tactics of Gayatri Spivak to move beyond arguments based on binary oppositions, employing feminist and colonialist discourses in a mutual new historicist critique of the figure of the woman in imperialist narrative. From a "radically contemporaneous" position, this seminal essay asserts that Oroonoko reveals traces of dialectical encounter between discourses of heroic romance and colonialist mercantilism in that it "generates female figures at every turn"; women are essential discursive mediators who enable the "superimposition of aristocratic and bourgeois" ideologies. Chibka, Robert L. "'Oh! Do no fear a woman's invention': Truth, Falsehood, and Fiction in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko." Texas Studies in Literature and Language 30 (1988): 510-537. Unique survey of the truth-claims made by the narrator and other characters in Oroonoko, revealing the novel's implicit commentary on the interrelatedness of truth-claims, deceit, and mental control. Chibka illustrates how disparities between the narrator's interactions with Oroonoko and her alliance with her audience reveal European epistemological and moral foundations "as examples not of truth but of ideological and political power." Rogers, Katharine M. "Fact and Fiction in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko." Studies in the Novel, 20 (1988): 1-15. While this recapitulation of the controversy over the factual evidence of Behn's visit to Surinam lacks exigence, some of the anthropological details furnished are fresh. However, its critical value is negligible. Starr, G. A. "Aphra Behn and the Genealogy of the Man of Feeling." Modern Philology 87 (1990): 362-372. Classifies Oroonoko as a precursor of the sentimental novel which "examines what it means to be powerless in a society where . . . power is everything." This historical study's most valuable observation is in response to the critical thread which views the novel as abolitionist: "[the novel's representation of slavery] promote[s] acquiescence in things as they are," inevitably rendering the action of the isolated individual against the institution a failure. Ferguson, Margaret. "Juggling the Categories of Race, Class, and Gender: Aphra Behn's Oroonoko." Women's Studies, 19 (1991): 159-81. Utilizes Gayatri Spivak's methodologies to investigate the conjunctions of race, class, and gender in Oroonoko. This important inquiry initiated the critical examination of the narrator's competition with Imoinda--in this reading, a struggle for control of Oroonoko's body and its productive power. Ferguson's efforts in this earlier essay have since been reapplied to Oroonoko with less success in essays included below. Ballaster, Rosalind. "New Hystericism: Aphra Behn's Oroonoko: The Body, the Text and the Feminist Critic." New Feminist Discourses: Critical Essays on Theories and Texts, ed. Isobel Armstrong. London: Routledge, 1992. 283-95. Lucidly criticizes Laura Brown, among other feminist new historicists, for ignoring the oppositional relationship between black and white women in Oroonoko in order to foreground the relational exchange between black men and white women. New historicist Ballaster finds that, while Oroonoko is Europeanized to engage audience sympathy, Imoinda's alterity is variously exaggerated; thus, the white narrator is able to take on the authoritative role of historian by contrasting herself to the black woman, an "inarticulate hysteric." Ferguson, Moira. "Oroonoko: Birth of a Paradigm." Subject to Others: British Women Writers and Colonial Slavery, 1670-1834. New York: Routledge, 1992. 27-50. Argues that Oroonoko establishes a paradigm for Eurocentric anti-slavery discourse, superficially broadcasting abolitionist sentiments, but tacitly endorsing the prevailing state of affairs, furthering the trope of the benevolent plantocrat, and reaffirming Anglo-Africanist stereotypes. Simultaneously, the portrayal of an Anglo-Africanized Imoinda reveals to European women their own disempowerment. However, new historicist Ferguson bases her assertion of Behn's Anglo-Africanization of Oroonoko on Oroonoko's being "light-complexioned" in comparison to the rest of the slaves. Since the narrator clearly describes his skin as like "ebony . . . jet," disturbing questions may be raised about the validity of the remainder of Ferguson's argument. Hutner, Heidi. "Aphra Behn's Oroonoko: The Politics of Gender, Race, and Class." Living by the Pen: Early British Women Writers. New York: Teachers College P, 1992. 39-551. Foucauldian new historicism informs this reconsideration of Oroonoko as a feminist/emancipationist commentary on the dual oppression of women and slaves by (male) colonial capitalists. In this scanty argument, the narrator, although a potentially subversive female, is ideologically dominated by a white patriarchal discourse; her words unintentionally reveal white males' commodification of and consequent economic desire for Africans. Points of this argument are based on conflation of the status of women with the status of slaves. Vermillion, Mary. "Buried Heroism: Critiques of Female Authorship in Southerne's Adaptation of Behn's Oroonoko." Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660-1700 16 (1992): 28-37. Predicating her comparative study on the assumption that Behn's portrayal of Oroonoko's heroism is directly related to the author's own struggles as a woman writer, feminist-new historicist Vermillion explains how Southerne's negativity toward female authorship prompts the addition of a comic subplot involving a single woman resembling Behn in complicity with the institution of colonial slavery. Surprisingly, Vermillion does not recognize the the subplot itself is lifted from Behn's drama The Widow Ranter. Athey, Stephanie and Daniel Cooper Alarc;n. "Oroonoko's Gendered Economies of Honor/Horror: Reframing Colonial Discourse Studies in the Americas." American Literature 65 (1993): 415-43. Follows Rosalind Ballaster in critiquing the white feminist tendency to minimize the significance of Imoinda's presence in Oroonoko. The two women, black and white, are read as related via a textual interchange in which the narrator takes metaphysical authority for herself and inscribes only physical value on Imoinda; however, the argument is poorly articulated. More valuable is the reading of the novel's exposure of rape as a mechanism for political and discursive manipulation of whole colonial populations.Ballaster, Rosalind. "'Pretences of State': Aphra Behn and the Female Plot." Hunter 187-211. Suggests that romantic form allowed Behn to express her politics covertly. Also discusses Oroonoko's symbolic function in the novel, that of a passive hero who proves his virtue by defying tyranny through martyrdom. This new historicist essay also relies on psychoanalytic theorists Irigaray and Lacan. Ferguson, Margaret. "Transmuting Othello: Aphra Behn's Oroonoko." Cross-Cultural Performances: Differences in Women's Re-Visions of Shakespeare. Ed. Marianne Novy. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1993. 15-49. Article unavailable. Erickson, Robert A. "Mrs. A. Behn and the Myth of Oroonoko-Imoinda." Eighteenth Century Fiction 5 (1993): 201-216. The discovery of allusions to the Bible and Paradise Lost enable this view of Oroonoko as myth, "the story of a god" and his consort in a "New Eden." In contrast to Laura Brown, Erickson does not find the evidence supporting the widely accepted argument that Oroonoko represents the Stuart monarchy convincing. The simplistic discussion is hesitantly feminist when contrasting Behn's (feminine) "primal creative" authorial energy with her inferior social status as a female. Sussman, Charlotte. "The Other Problem with Women: Reproduction and Slave Culture in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko." Hunter 212-33.  Yet another essay written under the tutelage of Laura Brown. Argues that the narrator romanticizes Imoinda's plight and self-sacrifice in order to better construct her own feminine, "individualist" literary ethos. Extensive discussion of Imoinda's pregnancy in the context of slave societies' attempts to prevent cultural or biological reproduction.  Ferguson, Margaret. "News from the New World: Miscegenous Romance in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko and The Widow Ranter." The Production of English Renaissance Culture. Ed. David Lee Miller, Sharon O'Dair, and Harold Weber. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1994. 151-189. Adds little to Ferguson's previous readings of the novel, reduplicating entire passages from the earlier "Juggling the Categories of Race, Class, and Gender" (1991) for an unfocussed effect. The major innovation is a correlative discussion of Behn's play The Widow Ranter. Fogarty, Anne. "Looks That Kill: Violence and Representation in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko." The Discourse of Slavery: Aphra Behn to Toni Morrison. Ed. Carl Plasa and Betty J. Ring. New York: Routledge, 1994. 1-17. Departs markedly from the critical trend to historicize initiated by Laura Brown. Instead, Fogarty regards slavery in Oroonoko as a metaphor for Behn's dual oppressed status as a woman and a Tory. In this reading, the novel implies that, because of unavoidable ethnic and political conflicts, neither racial nor ideological co-existence is ever possible. The validity of this otherwise convincing argument is occasionally clouded by Fogarty's tendency to make broad generalizations about the essential differences between "male" and "female" writers. Gallagher, Catherine. "The Author-Monarch and the Royal Slave: Oroonoko and the Blackness of Representation." Nobody's Story: The Vanishing Acts of Women Writers in the Marketplace, 1670-1820. Berkeley: U of California P, 1994. 49-87. This ingenious chapter from Gallagher's book deconstructs "blackness" in Oroonoko to reveal Oroonoko's "blackness" as a dual signifier of "body as mystical text" and of the property rights of a kingship over its subjects. When kingship such as Oroonoko's commodifies its subjects, and is itself finally commodified in the novel, blackness comes to represent the very act of exchange. Finally, the partition and distribution of Oroonoko's physical body ultimately emphasizes the negotiability of authorship and ownership of texts. Pacheco, Anita. "Royalism and Honor in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko." SEL: Studies in English Literature 34 (1994): 491-506. Reaffirms the novel's royalist ideology, but cautions that it is rendered less effective due to its dependence on an "unstable discourse of honor," which valorizes an honor code which challenges the Christian sensibilities upon which royalist discourse depends. Oroonoko's famous "emancipationist" speech is closely analyzed and discovered to be, in actuality, military rhetoric inspired, not by compassion, but by pride. Roberts, Diane. Introduction. The Myth of Aunt Jemima: Representation of Race and Region. New York: Routledge, 1994. 1-22. Based on theoretical works of Fanon and Said, this post-colonial interpretation of Oroonoko finds, not surprisingly, that Oroonoko and Imoinda have been both eroticized and orientalized by the narrator, but concludes that the narrative as a whole is a condemnation of slavery as an institution which promotes the sexual abuse of women. The examination of Oroonoko's death in the context of documented lynchings is regrettably brief. Unfortunately, the essay relies too heavily on the work of Margaret Ferguson, and its claim that Behn "understands blackness" is difficult to swallow. Hoegberg, David E. "Caesar's Toils: Allusion and Rebellion in Oroonoko." Eighteenth-Century Fiction 7 (1995): 239-258. In the most recent significant article on Oroonoko, Hoegberg recalls and expands on Chibka's analysis of the novel's truth-claims and manipulations. Through a survey of the novel's allusions to Oroonoko as Achilles, Caesar, and Hercules, the essay demonstrates that agents of power employ a "process of 'scripting'" to extend domination over others, who are then complicit in their own fate due to a sort of Gramscian hegemony.