Etherege, George | Lisa Berglund (essay date 1990)
Lisa Berglund (essay date 1990)
SOURCE: Berglund, Lisa. “The Language of Libertines: Subversive Morality in The Man of Mode.” SEL: Studies in English Literature 30, no. 3 (summer 1990): 369-86.
[In the essay below, Berglund explores how Dorimant and his retinue use a “libertine language” of extended metaphors and analogies to subvert conventional morality in The Man of Mode.]
When the practical but unhelpful maid Pert advises her mistress to renounce Dorimant, Mrs. Loveit defends her devotion by indicting her tormentor's paradoxical nature. “I know he is a devil,” she cries, “but he has something of the angel yet undefaced in him, which makes him so charming and agreeable that I must love him, be he never so wicked” (II.ii.15-17).1 Critics of Etherege's The Man of Mode suffer similar distress when faced with Dorimant, who, though the hero, is after all a damned libertine. He maintains three...
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