Sexual politics in revolutionary England

Sam Fullerton

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN:
  9781526175908
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526175892
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Sexual politics in revolutionary England recounts a dramatic transformation in English sexual polemic that unfolded during the kingdom's mid-seventeenth-century civil wars. In early Stuart England, explicit sexual language was largely confined to manuscript and oral forms by the combined regulatory pressures of ecclesiastical press licensing and powerful cultural notions of civility and decorum. During the early 1640s, however, graphic sex-talk exploded into polemical print for the first time in English history. Over the next two decades, sexual politics evolved into a vital component of public discourse, as contemporaries utilized sexual satire to reframe the English Revolution as a battle between licentious Stuart tyrants and their lecherous puritan enemies. By the time that Charles II regained the throne in 1660, this book argues, sex was already a routine element of English political culture.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Sexual satire and partisan identity, 1637–42
• 2 Mobilisation, escalation and sexual polemic, 1642–46
• 3 Toleration and its discontents, 1646–48
• 4 The porno-politics of regicide, 1648–51
• 5 Contesting reformation, 1649–53
• 6 Discipline and debauchery, 1654–59
• 7 The Restoration and beyond
• Conclusion
• Bibliography of archival sources
• Index