“…Caesar replied that honor was the first principle in Nature, that was to be obeyed…”
Aphra Behn (1640-1689) wrote the novel Oroonoko in 1688 and based it on her trip to what many researchers believe is Surinam. Behn begins the story with a statement of her legitimacy as an author. Immediately, she breaks the form of classicAristotelian fiction, which Aristotledescribes as an imitation of nature as a whole. Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) believed that fiction told whatcould happen instead of what did, making it superior to history, which is random and may not have a beginning, end, cause or effect. Behn makes it clear in the beginning of the novel that she is “an eye-witness,” that this story is not heresy. Because she states that she is writing about true events, she begins her novel with this statement defending the legitimacy in order to make it believable to the reader: “…and it shall come simply into the world, recommended by its own proper merits and natural intrigues…without the addition of invention” (1). Throughout the novel, she gives extraneous detail, producing the experience of truth.