As part of the M.A. teaching, had to read up Aprah Behn's Prefaces to her plays. What unique writing indeed by a woman who was the first (woman) author to live by pen when the literary, nay, the entire art world, crawled at the patrons' feet!
Here is a woman writing roughly three hundred fifty years ago, give a few years here and there, of course. Extremely contemporary though are her ideas!
She questions the 'supra censoring' by the 'powers that be' in the establishment, for instance. Many such are her upfront, honest, transparent critiques of multiple issues, the problems a woman writer, especially, a woman dramatist faces/suffers.
In those days, she stands up to the male canon making. She feels women have a better sensibility. She has the temerity to tell off her male critics who carp that she is not learned enough by declaring that unlike the University Wits, Shakespeare was a wonderful playwright, though he, too, was not highly qualified. Many, many are such issues she addresses.
Indeed her preface writing literally explodes in the reader's face, full as it is with extremely contemporary ideas through old typical debates.
Reading her is like meeting a long lost friend who was always bursting with new ideas, fresh insights, had a razor sharp mind that never failed to en-light-en! Amazing indeed! No wonder, 'read, dear', the mirror phrase, is the best mantra, the ideal antidote to banal, boring realities!
Pratima @jub we meet a mate!
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