A martyr for sin
Subtitle: Rochester's critique of polity, sexuality, and society
By: Kirk Combe.
Publisher: University of Delaware Press; Associated University Presses
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Newark, Del; London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 186
Subjects: Rochester, John Wilmot, Earl of, 1647-1680 -- Political and social views; Politics and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 17th century; Literature and society -- England -- History -- 17th century; Political poetry, English -- History and criticism; Social problems in literature; Sex in literature
Description: Unlike so many critics, Kirk Combe does not see the writings of John Wilmot, the second earl of Rochester, as being "curiously apolitical" (to use Dustin Griffin's phrase). In this study, he instead sees Rochester's poems, prose, and plays during the early modern period as pursuing an agenda of exposing the relationship between truth and power, in Michel Foucault's sense of those terms.

With subtlety and finesse, Rochester's writings enmesh their reader in the power structure of Restoration patrician society and Charles II's libertine court. Within this very specific locality, the works potentially lead Rochester's contemporary readership to a realization of "historically how effects of truth are produced within discourses which in themselves are neither true nor false" (Foucault).

In other words, many if not all of Rochester's writings work to debunk particular truth-producing mechanisms of Charles's court, unmask certain affectations of the luminaries of Whitehall, and expose to ridicule a range of patrician social and literary practices. Combe takes all such activities to be political in nature.

At the same time, the study extends an examination of Rochester's texts in their historical setting to a consideration of what our current critical reaction to them might indicate about us.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 177-182) and index.