BIBLIOGRAPHY

Vieth, David. Rochester Studies, 1925-1982: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1984, 174 p.

Annotated bibliography of most important critical works on Rochester from 1925 to 1982; includes an introduction that surveys the trends in Rochester studies since 1680.

BIOGRAPHIES

Adlard, John, ed., The Debt to Pleasure: John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester in the Eyes of His Contemporaries and in His Own Poetry and Prose. Manchester, UK: Carcanet, 1974, 141 p.

Composite biography of Rochester made up of comments made by his contemporaries as well as his own poetry and prose, presented in chronological order.

Greene, Graham. Lord Rochester's Monkey being the Life of John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester. New York: Viking, 1974, 231 p.

Biography written by the noted novelist in 1934 but not published until 1974; mistakenly credits Rochester with having written poems that in the intervening years were discovered not to be his.

Murdock, Kenneth B. “‘A Very Profane Wit’: John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, 1647-1680.” In The Sun at Noon: Three Biographical Sketches, pp. 269-306. New York: Macmillan, 1939.

Describes Rochester as a man who pursued sensual pleasures but was searching for more spiritual fulfillment.

Norman, Charles. Rake Rochester. New York: Crown, 1954, 224 p.

Non-scholarly work relating Rochester's story from its “bright beginnings” to its “tortured end,” noting that his reputation as a rake could not disguise his happiness nor his greatness as a poet.

Pinto, Vivian de Sola. Rochester: Portrait of a Restoration Poet. London: John Lane, Bodley Head, 1935); revised as Enthusiast in Wit: A Portrait of John Wilmot Earl of Rochester 1647-1680. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962, 294 p.

Considered the definitive biography of Rochester; includes analyses of his poetry and Rochester's psychological profile in the context of the intellectual and cultural climate in which he lived.

CRITICISM

Clark, John R. “The Satiric Singing: An Example from Rochester.” The English Record 24 (Fall, 1973): 16-20.

Interpretation of “Song of Young Lady to her Ancient Lover” as a satire and not a romantic piece.

Edwards, A. S. G. “The Authorship of Sodom.” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 71 (Second Quarter 1977): 208-212.

Contends that Sodom was written by at least three different people.

Fabricant, Carole. “Rochester's World of Imperfect Enjoyment.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 73 (July, 1974): 338-50.

Claims that Rochester's bawdy poems focus on the frustration of sexuality.

Farley-Hills, David. Rochester: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972, 230 p.

Anthology surveying the attitudes to Rochester's work from the seventeenth century to 1903.

———. Introduction to Rochester's Poetry, pp. 1-9. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1978.

Argues that Rochester's poetry reveals his knowledge of the conventions of morality and manners despite its tone of rebelliousness.

Griffin, Dustin H. Satires Against Man: The Poems of Rochester. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973, 317 p.

Full-length critical study of Rochester's poetry using a psychological approach, with a great deal of attention devoted to A Satire Against Mankind.

Johnson, J. W. “Did Lord Rochester Write Sodom?” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 81 (June 1987): 119-153.

Provides evidence to show that Rochester was the writer responsible for Sodom—or a least that nobody else was as likely to have written the short play as Rochester was.

Johnson, Ronald W. “Rhetoric and Drama in Rochester's “Satyr Against Reason and Mankind.” Studies in English Literature 15, No. 3 (Summer, 1975): 365-73.

Contends that with A Satire of Reason and Mankind Rochester produces satire of the widest scope because the rhetorical and dramatic structures in the work complement one another.

Johnson, Samuel. “Rochester.” In Lives of the English Poets, Volume 3, edited by George Birkneck Hill. Written 1779; originally published 1905 by the Clarendon Press; reprint New York: Octagon Books, 1967, pp. 219-28.

Presents a brief biographical sketch, assesses the poet's character, and evaluates its literary merits; is generally guarded in its praise of Rochester's work.

Moore, John F. “The Originality of Rochester's Satyr Against Mankind.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 58, No. 3 (June, 1943): 393-401.

Maintains that although Rochester relied on several sources (including works by Boileau and Montaigne) in composing his satire, he must be credited with the same degree of originality as others who are inspired by other works and develop them into their own writing.

O'Neill, John H. “Rochester's ‘Imperfect Enjoyment’: ‘The True Veine of Satyre in Sexual Poetry.” Tennessee Studies in Literature 25 (1980): 57-71.

Views “Imperfect Enjoyment” as a satire of pride (specifically, the pride of the flesh) in the tradition of classical satire.

Pasch, Thomas K. “Concentricity, Christian Myth, and the Self-Incriminating Narrator in Rochester's A Ramble in St. James's Park.” Essays in Literature 6 (Spring, 1979): 21-28.

Demonstrates that “A Ramble in St. James's Park” overturns the reader's expectations because of the arrangment of its five sections, its biblical imagery, and the seemingly reliable but actually self-deluded narrator.

Patterson, John D. “Rochester's Second Bottle: Attitudes to Drink and Drinking in the Works of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester.” Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660-1700 5 (Spring 1981): 6-15.

Explores the poet's attitudes to drink and women in relation to friendship, wisdom, and literary inspiration.

Pinto, Vivian de Sola. “The Poetry of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester.” Essays by Divers Hands, Being the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature of the United Kingdom New Series Volume 13 (1934): 107-33.

Detailed discussion of Rochester's poems which emphasizes their intellectual complexity and seriousness.

———. “John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester and the Right Veine of Satire.” In Seventeenth-Century English Poetry: Modern Essays in Criticism, edited by William R. Keast, pp. 359-74. New York: Oxford University Press, 1962.

Judges Rochester as the most gifted of the Restoration court poets and as the pioneer satirist of his age.

Thormählen, Marianne. Rochester: The Poems in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, 383 p.

Study that attempts to present Rochester as a complex and serious artists; includes lengthy analyses of individual poems, including “The Imperfect Enjoyment,” “A Ramble in Saint James's Park,” Artemisia and Chloe, Upon Nothing, A Satire Against Reason and Mankind, “Tunbridge Wells,” and “Timon.”

Vieth, David M. Attribution in Restoration Poetry: A Study of Rochester's “Poems” of 1680. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1963, 537 p.

Analyzes the authorship of close to a hundred of the 250 poems that have been attributed (some erroneously) to Rochester.

———. “Toward and Anti-Aristotelian Poetic: Rochester's Satyr against Mankind and Artemisia to Chloe, with Notes on Swift's Tale of a Tub and Gulliver's Travels.” Language and Style 5 (Spring, 1972): 123-45.

Discusses the form of Satyr against Mankind and Artemisia to Chloe,.

———. “Pleased with the Contradiction and the Sin: The Perverse Artistry of Rochester's Lyrics.” Tennessee Studies in Literature 25 (1980): 3-36.

Detailed analysis of a number of Rochester lyrics, including “Upon Leaving His Mistress,” “Absent from Thee,” “The Mistress,” and “Song of Young Lady to her Ancient Lover,” comparing the poet's technique to that of other seventeenth-century masters.

Wilcoxon, Reba. “Rochester's Philosophical Premises: A Case for Consistency.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 8 (Winter 1974/75): 183-201.

Focuses on the philosophical premises that shape Rochester's work and undergird his satire.

———. “The Rhetoric of Sex in Rochester's Burlesque.” Papers on Language and LIterature 12 (Summer, 1976): 273-84.

Examines Rochester's satires on sexual behavior and finds that while they are clearly bawdy and seek to violate conventions of love poetry, they are not altogether cynical about the nature of love.

———. “Rochester's Sexual Politics.” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, edited by Roseann Runte. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979, pp. 137-149.

Claims that Rochester satirizes male dominance, condemns the male use of women as objects, and celebrates female sexuality.

Wilson, J. Harold. “Satirical Elements in Rochester's Valentinian.” Philological Quarterly 16, No. 1 (January, 1937): 41-48.

Provides evidence to show that the character of Valentinian was intended by Rochester as a satire of Charles II.

Additional coverage of Rochester's life and career is contained in the following source published by the Gale Group: Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 131.