Libertines and Radicals in Early Modern London: Sexuality, Politics and Literary Culture, 1630-1685

James Turner

Cambridge University Press, 2002 - History - 343 pages

A 'Deluge of Libertinism' swept through England in the turbulent seventeenth century: class and gender relations went into deep crisis, and sexually explicit literature took the blame. Bridging periods often kept apart, Libertines and Radicals analyses English sexual culture between the Civil Wars and the death of Charles II in great detail. James Grantham Turner examines a broad range of Civil War and Restoration texts, from sex-crime records to Milton's epics and Rochester's 'mannerly obscene' lyrics. Turner places special emphasis on women's writing and on pornographic texts like The Wandering Whore and The Parliament of Women, flavoured with cockney humour or 'Puritan' indignation. Throughout, Turner reads satirical texts, whether political or pornographic, as an attempt to neutralize women's efforts to establish their own institutions and their own voice. This exhaustive study will be of interest to cultural historians as well as literary scholars.

Contents

• Pornographia and the markings of prostitution an introduction: 1
• Ceremonies of abjectlon sex politics and the disorderly subculture: 47
• The posture of a free state polit1cal pornography and the commonwealth of women 16401660: 74
• The wandering whores return the carnivalization of sexuality in the early Restoration: 118
• Monstrous assemblies bawdyhouse riots libertine libels and the royal mistress: 164
• Making yourself a beast upperclass riot and inversionary wit in the age of Rochester: 197
• In Bathshebas Embraces old pornographia rediviva at the close of Charles IIs reign: 252
• Notes: 275
• Index: 331

About the author

James Grantham Turner is Professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of One Flesh: Paradisal Marriage and Sexual Relations in the Age of Milton (1987) and editor of The Politics of Landscape: Rural Scenery and Society in English Poetry, 1630-1660 (1979) and Sexuality and Gender in Early Modern Europe: Institutions, Texts, Images (Cambridge 1993).

Bibliographic information

• Title: Libertines and Radicals in Early Modern London: Sexuality, Politics and Literary Culture, 1630-1685
• Author: James Turner
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2002
• ISBN: 0521782791, 9780521782791
• Length: 343 pages
• Subjects: History / Europe / Great Britain / General; History / Europe / Renaissance; Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Literary Criticism / Renaissance; Literary Criticism / Subjects & Themes / Love & Erotica; Literary Criticism / Subjects & Themes / Politics; Literary Criticism / Women Authors; Social Science / Gender Studies