British Erotica Before and After 1700

Arthur H. Cash. An Essay on Woman by John Wilkes and Thomas Potter: A Reconstruction of a Lost Book (New York: AMS Press, 2000). Pp. xii + 200. $64.50 cloth.

Alexander Pettit and Patrick Spedding, general eds. Eighteenth-Century British Erotica: Set I, 5 vols.; vol. 1 Pleasures, Comforts and Plagues of the Early Eighteenth Century . Pp. xxxi + 373; vol. 2 Edmund Curll and Grub-Street Highlights . Pp. xviii + 456; vol. 3 The Geography and Natural History of Mid-Eighteenth-Century Erotica . Pp. xvi + 366; vol. 4 Wilkes and the Late Eighteenth Century . Pp. xviii + 361; vol. 5 Sex Doctors and Sex Crimes . xix + 474 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2002). $675.00 cloth.

James Grantham Turner. Libertines and Radicals in Early Modern London: Sexuality, Politics, and Literary Culture, 1630-1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Pp. xxii + 343. $65.00 cloth.

The original premise for this review was that James Turner's new investigation of libertine culture and radical politics in the seventeenth century could be tested against the erotic primary material assembled in Alexander Pettit and Patrick Spedding's collection of eighteenth-century British erotica. Unfortunately, reading the books in question revealed that this approach would not work because of the distinct chronological span of the books. Instead, a new question emerged: Is there a significant difference between erotica written before and after 1700? On one level, it could be argued that the paradigm of the connection between (erotic) literature and culture that underlies Turner's argument is no longer applicable to material written only fifteen or twenty years later (Turner's book ends with 1685; the erotica start in 1700). This disconnect would allow for the conclusion that composing erotic literature changed dramatically, approximately at the time of the Glorious Revolution, from a politically loaded statement into a sexually and financially motivated enterprise—paralleled by a medicalization of sexuality. On the other hand, political elements persist even in late eighteenth-century erotica, so perhaps there is no glacial shift after all.

One change of forms of government earlier, Libertines and Radicals interestingly looks at the continuities rather than the differences between the Civil War period and the Restoration. Turner identifies a discourse between 1630 and 1685 which he calls pornographia, "the sexually explicit discourse of prostitution and its application to social institutions and political events" (xii). By twenty-first-century standards, Turner's material is not really very explicit, but his investigation of its uses in society and politics is fascinating. Most importantly, women across all social classes are linked through pornographia with a variety of goals, for instance emphasizing "loose" morals in order to undermine the aristocracy and royalty, or highlighting the similarities between the king's mistresses and common whores in a somewhat counterintuitive attempt to reinforce the boundaries between upper and lower classes. Throughout his book, Turner is interested in "real" history as much as in literature. Towards the beginning, he concentrates on charivari or Skimmington rides, i.e., festivals in which the lower classes parodied grand opera and royal pageantry in order to enforce community values, mostly against wayward women. These celebrations, though limited in time and space, offered an opportunity for lewdness and class mingling. On the one hand, they were intended to punish (sexual) transgression; on the other, by exhibiting transgression (in order to punish it) they gave it more publicity. Similarly, the charivari provided a forum for sedition, which could be excused as mere parody or theater. These phenomena are documented in great historical detail in Libertines and Radicals, but then Turner also goes on to show how authors employed them in "high" literature: Cavendish shows masculinity under attack at the charivari, Butler celebrates the Skimmington ride and lets women triumph, but then advocates for a misogynist restoration of gender hierarchy, and Marvell allows for political subversion under the guise of a cultural "humiliation ritual" (72).

During the time of the Civil War, "real" women gained "actual" power as...