On Satire: The Earl of Rochester

According to one contemporary, the Earl of Rochester was a man who, in life as well is in poetry, ‘could not speak with any warmth, without repeated Oaths, which, upon any sort of provocation, came almost naturally from him.’ It’s certainly hard to miss Rochester's enthusiastic use of obscenities, though their precise meanings can sometimes be obscure. As a courtier to Charles II, his poetic subject was most often the licentiousness and intricate political manoeuvring of the court’s various factions, and he was far from a passive observer. In this episode Clare and Colin consider why Restoration England was such a satirical hotbed, and describe the ways in which Rochester, with a poetry rich in bravado but shot through with anxiety, transformed the persona of the satirist.
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Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell are both fellows of All Souls College, Oxford.
All episodes in the 'On Satire' series:
What is satire? • On Satire: What is sat...
John Donne's Satires: • On Satire: John Donne'...
Ben Jonson's 'Volpone': • On Satire: Ben Jonson'...
The Earl of Rochester: • On Satire: The Earl of...
John Gay's 'The Beggar's Opera': • On Satire: John Gay's ...
'The Dunciad' by Alexander Pope: • On Satire: 'The Duncia...
'The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman' by Laurence Sterne: • On Satire: 'The Life a...
Jane Austen’s ‘Emma’ • 'Interest' and reading...
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Is his character not better understood as a response to the institutionalised degeneracy of Charles II's courtly culture? Whereas his peers were neither hot nor cold he determined to go full bore a al Rimbaud avant le lettre and brazenly sign his lordly name to it too?