ABSTRACT
Jason Pearl, in a valuable study of the idea of utopia in the novel, has argued that Aphra Behn’s numb-eel, being explained "by natural history rather than romance," is "generically and ontologically different" from her fantastic tiger that lived for years with seven bullets lodged in its heart. Behn's own contribution to Aesopian fable was commissioned by the artist Francis Barlow in the late 1680s. Behn’s Oroonoko is inspired both by Aesop’s lion and by Aesop himself. Behn's use of the name "tiger" has been seen as a sign that her real concerns are articulated through classical Europe rather than contemporary South America; as evidence of her orientalizing the New World by importing Asian animals into it; or as signaling the text’s entry into a "space of utopian New World pastoral". Several of Aesop’s fables feature the lion, king of beasts, associated with royalty, and on occasion scheming and treacherous.
