Sexual Politics in Revolutionary England

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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.

Reviews

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

Author Bio

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