Resumen de Women’s Contribution to Early Modern Utopian to Early Modern Utopian World: "Oroonoko" and "The Widow Ranter" by Aphra Behn
Literature on the New World with its interconnection with utopian writing of the earlymodern age unveils the deep role played by the New World in the European imagination as an ‘ideal’ space in which to experiment with various forms of government, project repressed fantasies and desires and locate utopian communities. The New World,as utopian scholars have emphasized, also represented a real space where new formsof societies could be experimented and established in the hope of, and the longingfor, a new and better life. Moving from the recent debates on this topic, my essay aimsto interrogate women’s approach to this type of literature and their use of the NewWorld as a possible space for women’s cultural empowerment and agency. In particular, I intend to examine how Aphra Behn employs the English colonies (Surinam inOroonoko, 1688, and Virginia in The Widow Ranter, 1689) to delve into historical andpolitical events ‒ from which women were excluded ‒ to claim recognition as writerand Subject, and to investigate and question the use of the utopian imaginary itself.
