• Sexual politics in revolutionary England
1 1

Sexual politics in revolutionary England

$130.00
$0.00 $130.00
Sold out
This book explores the sudden emergence of graphic sex-talk in English print culture during the events of the English Revolution (1640–60) and argues for the long-term significance of that developm...
Read More
  • 25 June 2024
View Product Details
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.
files/i.png Icon
Price: $130.00
Pages: 320
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Series: Politics, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain
Publication Date: 25 June 2024
ISBN: 9781526175908
Format: Hardcover
BISACs: Psychology: sexual behaviour, Politics and government, Social and cultural history
REVIEWS Icon

WINNER of the 2025 Book Prize from the Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies.

'Samuel Fullerton has produced an excellent debut monograph which is intelligent, ably written, and certain to be of great interest to a wide range of scholars... This welcome monograph is a valuable addition to the historiography of the English Revolution, early modern political culture, and the history of sexuality.'
History: The Journal of the Historical Association

'Samuel Fullerton’s Sexual Politics in Revolutionary England is a narrative history of the use of sexualized language in printed polemic in the period of the English revolution, civil war, and commonwealth (1637–60)... The study is very detailed and traces the evolution of sexualized political discourse from the first resistance to King Charles in 1637 through the civil war, the execution of the king, the establishment of the Puritan commonwealth, and finally the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. It provides an excellent and thorough description of the many texts, both Royalist and revolutionary, that weaponized sexual discourse to denigrate their political opponents.'
Ian Frederick Moulton, Journal of the History of Sexuality

'The scope of the material covered is vast and thorough. Fullerton’s close analysis is important.'
Johanna Luthman, Renaissance Quarterly

Samuel Fullerton is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of North Texas

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
Index