Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2022
Abstract
Chapter Abstract
The most eclectic of genres, Behn’s prose corpus consist of twelve works of fiction, prose-meter translations and philosophical works. This chapter addresses the dominance of the Love Letters trilogy, though it treats the work as three separate publications, and offers insights on Behn’s authorship based on concordance data. More so than in the previous genres, Behn explores and defines love through the experimental new forms of discursive writing, and as a result love takes on new qualities of repetition, amplitude and excess. Love is again the most dominant word in prose, and it continues to operate as a powerful and mysterious external force, and her narratives feature notable characters in crises of extreme passion. In an exploration of the critical assessment of Behn’s amatory mode, the chapter charts a warmth index in her prose works based on vocabulary identified by critics as lush or warm. Behn’s signature style proves to be unique in comparison with a set of ten works of contemporary fiction, including by George McKenzie, Margaret Cavendish, John Bunyan, Mariana Alcoforado, Robert Boyle, William Congreve, Madame de Lafayette, Mademoiselle La Roche-Guilhen and Mary Pix.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.5038/qla.ch3.data
Scholar Commons Citation
Runge, Laura, "Chapter Three: The Prose of Love" (2022). QUANTITATIVE LITERARY ANALYSIS OF THE WORKS OF APHRA BEHN - Datasets. 4.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/qla_aphra_behn_data/4
Concordance data for prose.
