Oroonoko’s story is related to us by a nameless female narrator, the daughter of the Lord Governor of Surinam, an English colony where Oroonoko will find himself a slave. Fatefully, his deep fascination with navigation also leads him to board the ship. Oroonoko by Aphra Behn is a seventeenth-century novella that tells the story of the eponymous hero, the prince and heir to the throne of the African country of Cormantien. As we learn from the narrator, every day he is entertained “with globes and maps, and mathematical discourses and instruments.” For Oroonoko, the knowledge imparted by his new European “friend” is a rich source of enlightenment and pleasure. Oroonoko, a West African prince from what is now Ghana, “is introduced to the science and practice of navigation by the commander of an English slave ship,” Sills explains. This critique comes into effect at the very start of the novel, when Behn first refers to navigational instruments.

According to literature professor Adam Sills, Behn sought to challenge readers’ optimistic views of the scientific machinery that propped up the Atlantic slave trade. A closer look at her fiction, however, suggests that it aspires to much more than a truthful or neutral depiction of reality. Everything you need for every book you read. In the dedication to her 1688 novel, Oroonoko, Aphra Behn wrote that a “Poet is a Painter in his way he draws to the Life.” Not surprisingly, Behn’s work has been read as an early precursor to literary realism. Oroonoko is black Brittany Kennedy (author) from Kailua-Kona, Hawaii on July 09, 2012: Sean, THANK YOU I totally agree with the points you made. Oroonoko by Aphra Behn Upgrade to A + Intro Plot Summary Summary & Analysis Themes Quotes Characters Symbols Lit Devices Theme Wheel Teachers and parents Struggling with distance learning Our Teacher Edition on Oroonoko can help.