Aphra Behn and John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

Abstract This chapter discusses and compares two poets often regarded as representing male and female literary perspectives on late seventeenth-century libertine culture. While Aphra Behn and the Earl of Rochester had much in common, not least their permissive attitudes towards sexuality, they differed in many ways, including their generic preferences, their investment in contemporary politics, their use of print and manuscript, and the degree of control each sought to exercise over their literary works. Famously obscene, Rochester’s poetry is characterised by its use of strong narrative voices, variously and always problematically identifiable with the poet himself. The many innovative aspects of Behn’s poetry include her exploration of diverse forms of female sexual experience and her outspoken engagement in royalist politics.