"My unwasht Muse": (De-)Konstruktionen der Erotik in der englischen Literatur des 17. Jahrhunderts

In the 17th century a profound change took place in the depiction of the body and the erotic. Whilst the metaphysics of Donne and Crashaw represented theology under the sign of the erotic and simultaneously theologized the corporeal, the Cavaliers had severed these alliances since the 1620’s. Influenced by the invention of the stage figure, Don Juan, poets such as Carew, Suckling and the Earl of Rochester cast the erotic as quantitative greatness, thereby laying the corner stone of the misogynist pornography of later centuries.