New Thinking: Aphra Behn
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 8 January 2021
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
From spy to one of the first professional woman writers in Britain - Aphra Behn was a prolific playwright, poet, translator and fiction writer in the Restoration period. Claire Bowditch has spent years comparing different printed versions of her dramas to work out what were printer errors and how involved was Aphra Behn in the printing process. Annalisa Nicholson is researching a French salon in London created by the French noblewoman Hortense Mancini - whom Behn dedicated a play to. Is this evidence of a relationship between them? Tom Charlton looks at the politics of the period and Behn's loyalty to the Stuart crown. John Gallagher hosts the conversation.
Claire Bowditch is an AHRC Post-Doctoral Research Associate at Loughborough University working on this project https://www.aphrabehn.online/front-page/ Tom Charlton is a New Generation Thinker, and a Stirling Research Fellow, working at Dr Williams's Library and one of the editorial team for the Oxford University Press edition of the Reliquiae Baxterianae https://dwl.ac.uk and http://www.baxterianae.com/home.html AnnaLisa Nicholson is working on her PDH at the University of Cambridge https://profiles.ahrcdtp.csah.cam.ac.uk/directory/anna-lisa-nicholson
John Gallagher is a New Generation Thinker who lecture in Early Modern History at the University of Leeds https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/history/staff/774/dr-john-gallagher
This episode was made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI. You can find a playlist focused on New Research on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90 or sign up for the Arts & Ideas podcast and look out for New Thinking episodes https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02nrvk3/episodes/downloads
Producer: Ruth Watts
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
| 0:23.3 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.0 | Hi, I'm John Galaher. |
| 0:33.8 | And in this episode, in the new thinking strand of the Arts and Ideas podcast, we'll be talking about Afra Ben. |
| 0:41.7 | Poet, playwright and spy. Afra Ben is one of Restoration England's most fascinating figures. Today, |
| 0:49.6 | my guests take us across continents between the lines and into the archives, in search of the first |
| 0:55.3 | professional female playwright to work in English. I'm joined by Claire Boditch from |
| 1:00.2 | Loughbury University, who's spending all her working hours and possibly more living and breathing |
| 1:05.5 | Afra Ben as she works on editing her writing for Cambridge University Press. Claire, there's real interest |
| 1:12.0 | in Afroben among researchers today. What's her significance in the history of the 17th century? |
| 1:16.9 | Her literary career starts in 1670, and she's still going strong up until the point that she |
| 1:23.3 | dies in 1689. So in terms of her significance then, she's really the first woman to earn her |
| 1:31.8 | living in a literary context, so as a professional writer and indeed in a theatrical context. |
| 1:38.9 | Tom Charlton is a BBC Arts and Humanities Research Council, New Generation Thinker. He's a research |
| 1:44.1 | fellow at Dr. Williams's |
| 1:45.3 | library in London, so he's also well used to spending a lot of time looking closely at 17th century |
| 1:50.4 | texts. Tom, has she been remembered less for the work itself than for the fact that she wrote |
| 1:56.2 | it at all? Yes. There's a tendency for Afro-Ben to be rediscovered every kind of hundred years or so. And she's most |
| 2:04.8 | famously known for Virginia Woolf's writing at the turn of the previous century, in which she says |
| 2:09.6 | that Afra Ben is the woman that female authors ought to lay flowers on the grave, because she's earned |
| 2:15.1 | them the right to speak their mind. But the problem with that |
... |
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