By Tatun Harrison-Turnbull
Author Biography:
Tatun Harrison-Turnbull is in her fourth year at The University of Edinburgh, studying English Literature (MA Hons). She has focused on 20th and 21st century literature, with an attention to literary form, climate, and capital. She has developed a more recent interest in contemporary North American eco-poetry, considering plastics and plasticity in the work of Evelyn Reilly, Adam Dickinson and Rita Wong. Extending her interest in ecocritical texts, she has started exploring writings by JG Ballard or petrofiction by Helon Habila.
Read the full essay here:
This essay explores the relationship between names and power by examining Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko and Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina. Although both novellas take a different approach to this notion, analysing empowerment through conciliation of identity and disempowerment through renaming, they both share the exploration of honour, virtue, and self-determination. The author details how names and their usage are portrayed through a close reading of both texts, followed by in-depth explanations of their use concerning morality and ownership. For Fantomina, identity is explored, as the different disguises of the character are analysed as tools of performance. The character defies ownership by changing disguises and veiling her true identity, subsequently displaying how patriarchal power dynamics can be destabilised. Opposed to that, Oroonoko describes how the qualities of good characters are not bound to name or title. The titular character, stripped of his title, is still brave and held in esteem. The effects of renaming are explored concerning ownership since it erases his prior identity. Hence, names and naming are examined as they have different functions in the two texts; in Fantomina, ownership is defied by veiling one’s real identity, whereas in Oroonoko, the character’s real name symbolises his enslavement.
Comentarios