ENGL 200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Oroonoko, Oxymoron, Coromantee
23 Nov 2016
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Document Summary
Slaves in surinam are negroes, black slaves altogether - implies different order to human being. Altogether intensifies the divide in social category. Description of coramantien: one of those places in which they found the most advantageous trading for these slaves. Completely fabricated, behn had never been to africa. Africans trade slaves: naturalizes slavery, exonerates europeans. Africans are sellers, europeans are complicit buyers. Links to slavery to class: all they(the africans) took in battle were sold as slaves, at least those common men who could not ransom themselves. Associates slavery with a particular caste of people. Although the novel is making a critical statement regarding slavery, it was read and understood as being anti-slavery. This novel is something abolitionists presented as evidence for anti-slavery. However, this novel is ambivalent about slavery and confuses many issues (mingles race with class and gender, forces us to focus on whether or not it is right for one human being to own another)
