Rochester and the pursuit of pleasure provides a reading of Rochester’s 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 Rochester’s work clusters about a central theme, the pursuit of pleasure, a pursuit motivated by a courtship of purity that grew out of Rochester’s Christian and God-fearing upbringing. This rhetoric of courtship, in turn, reveals the unity of Rochester’s work as the courtier and his various personae try to persuade his audiences, secular and divine, of his worth.
