The Empire has done some terrible things, but the slave trade may be amongst it's worst contributions to the world. Oroonoko traces the story of an African Prince taken into slavery and sold. The novel (if that's what you want to call it; it may be better to think of it as a novella) plays with structure and form. It seems to be an early example of a "frame" novel. The narration is strong, and there are vivid and wonderful descriptions of Africa. Location and scene is developed nicely. There are unusual elements where the novel shifts from 1st to 3rd, but this doesn't hinder the reader. The novel seems to want to suggest the evils or perils of slavery, and using the primary character as a price, does seem to really want to focus the readership of the novel to British elites. The novel makes you think about slavery and it makes you see slaves as people, not just as objects for trade and labor.
I am no authority to speak on behalf of the development of the novel, but regarding the various theories presented in the first chapter of Ballaster’s Seductive Forms , I can only conclude that reason and logic would seem to indicate a preference for Michael McKeon’s theory / understanding of the development of the novel as form and object. Ballaster does a wonderful job at expressing the weaknesses of theories presented by Watt, Davis, and others within the formalism / historicism/ hybrid theory debate. When reviewing these theories, I struggled to grasp the complexity of some of these narratives. I also struggled with what appeared to be a lack of basic logic in terms of the progression of structure and device. The historicists seem to ignore or undervalue the progression of literary tradition. The formalists seem to forget that every writer, regardless of position or gender, are people living in a given time; that as individuals who exert themselves as writers of the page, t
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