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

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. Turner reads Civil War and Restoration porno-political satire as an attempt to neutralize women's efforts to establish their own institutions and their own voice.