Libertines and Radicals in Early Modern London

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).

• List of illustrations; Preface; List of abbreviations and frequently cited works; 1. Pornographia and the markings of prostitution: an introduction; 2. Ceremonies of abjection: sex, politics and the disorderly subculture; 3. 'The posture of a free state': political pornography and the 'commonwealth of women', 1640–1660; 4. The wandering whore's return: the carnivalization of sexuality in the early Restoration; 5. Monstrous assemblies: bawdy-house riots, 'libertine libels' and the royal mistress; 6. 'Making yourself a beast': upper-class riot and inversionary wit in the age of Rochester; Epilogue: 'In Bathsheba's Embraces old': pornographia rediviva at the close of Charles II's reign; Notes; Index.

"Libertines and Radicals is unquestionably a major contribution to our understanding of libertinism in the age of Milton..." Milton Quarterly