ABSTRACT

This essay casts new light on Aphra Behn’s poetry and practice by exploring her preoccupation with human eyes. Behn repeatedly references eyes as objects in her verse, whilst also evoking the visual senses through the use of related verbs and metaphors. I argue that to better understand Behn’s fixation with eyes we need to look beyond her verse to visual culture of the period, especially to the portraiture of Sir Peter Lely. Behn’s verse and Lely’s portraits return repeatedly to the setting of the locus amoenus, an arcadian space populated by amorous swains and shepherdesses. By reading Behn’s and Lely’s work in dialogue we can better understand a wider philosophy about human desire at work across their œuvres. This approach provides new answers to key questions related to their artistic practice. It explains why Lely repeatedly depicted his sitters with the same “sleepy eyes”, an approach oft critiqued but, when understood alongside Behn’s poetry, becomes a deliberate move that indicates the conquest of sitter over viewer. The evidence assembled here also suggests that Behn’s poetry was directly influenced by portraiture, which had become far more accessible through the introduction of mezzotint engraving in the 1670s and 80s.

摘要

本文通过探讨阿芙拉·贝恩对人眼的关注，为她的诗歌和实践提供了新的视角。贝恩在她的诗中反复将眼睛视为物体，同时还通过使用相关的动词和隐喻来唤起视觉感官。我认为，为了更好地理解贝恩对眼睛的迷恋，我们需要超越她的诗句，看到那个时期的视觉文化，尤其是彼得·莱利爵士的肖像。贝恩的诗句和莱利的肖像反复回到阿莫努斯的背景，一个居住着多情的情夫和牧羊女的田园空间。通过阅读贝恩和莱利的对话作品，我们可以更好地理解他们作品中关于人类欲望的更广泛的哲学。这种方法为与其艺术实践相关的关键问题提供了新的答案。这解释了为什么莱利反复用同样的“睡眼”来描绘他的模特，这种方法经常受到批评，但当与贝恩的诗歌一起理解时，就成为一种刻意的举动，表明模特征服了观众。这里收集的证据还表明，贝恩的诗歌直接受到肖像画的影响，通过 1670 年代和 80 年代金属版雕刻的引入，肖像画变得更加容易理解。