근대 서간체 소설 연구

A Study on Early Modern Epistolary Novel: Aphra Behn’s Love-Letters

This essay examines the pioneering epistolary novel techniques in Aphra Behn’s Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister. This work has been completely excluded from the mainstream discourse on the early English novel. It has been regarded an imitation or a mere translation of French immoral romance, Portuguese Letters. Yet, as my thesis will show, Love-Letters is an original writing in that it records a unique development of epistolary narrative technique and becomes a precursive realistic novel. Unlike Portuguese Letters, Ben's novel narrates a story through interchanges between characters. It allows characters to tell his or her own story, making the narration more lively and authentic. This technique anticipates the double correspondence method in Richardson's Clarissa. Part Ⅰ of Love-Letters is the first original English novel written entirely in epistolary form. In the second part of Love-Letters, Behn shifts her narrative form from a purely epistolary form to a combination of third person narrative and letters. The third person narrator always appears after every one or two letter(s), and tells readers as in an aside in drama the letter recipient's reaction and emotion which cannot be fully told in letters. It is essential in epistolary novel that main events are presented in letters, and Part Ⅱ follows the rule. The narration supplements the letters, not playing the main role. This kind of combined narratives was unique in the history of English novel. Love-Letters gives vivid expression to varying emotions and moods. It has many episodes described in the lively and spontaneous manner. The dramatic quality, the interplay of wits, the suggestion of background and the urgency of the events narrated certainly anticipate the Richardsonian novel. Behn's experiment with the novel in letters must have influenced the later development of the English novel.