Rochester and the Pursuit of Pleasure

Rochester and the pursuit of pleasure provides a reading of Rochesters poems, dramatic works, and letters in a biographical context. In doing so, it sheds light on a central vexed issue in Rochester criticism, the relationship of the poet to his speaker. It also reveals that Rochesters work clusters about a central theme, the pursuit of pleasure, a pursuit motivated by a courtship of purity that grew out of Rochesters Christian and God-fearing upbringing. This rhetoric of courtship, in turn, reveals the unity of Rochesters work as the courtier and his various personae try to persuade his audiences, secular and divine, of his worth. -- .