"A Satyr Against Reason and Mankind" is a satirical poem by the English Restoration poet John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester.
"A Satyr Against Reason and Mankind" addresses the question of the proper use of reason, and is generally assumed to be a Hobbesian critique of rationalism. [1] The narrator subordinates reason to sense. [2] It is based to some extent on Boileau's version of Juvenal's eighth or fifteenth satire, and is also indebted to Hobbes, Montaigne, Lucretius and Epicurus, as well as the general libertine tradition. [3] Confusion has arisen in its interpretation as it is ambiguous as to whether the speaker is Rochester himself or a satirised persona. [4] It criticises the vanities and corruptions of the statesmen and politicians of the court of Charles II. [3]
The poem is generally supposed to have been written before June 1674, which is the dating of the earliest surviving manuscript. [1] Along with A Ramble in St. James's Park, it is one of Rochester's best known works, and his most influential during his lifetime. [1] It exists in some 52 manuscripts, more than any other work by the author. [1]
It resulted in four direct poetic responses; Edward Pococke's An Answer to the Satyr against Mankind, Thomas Lessey's A Satyr In Answer to the Satyr against Man, and the two anonymous responses An answer to a Satyr [against] Reason & Mankind and An Answer to the Satyr, Against Man. [1] It is alluded to in John Crowne's 1676 play The Country Wit . [1] It has been argued that John Dryden addressed the poem in Religio Laici . [1]
John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester was an English poet and courtier of King Charles II's Restoration court, who reacted against the "spiritual authoritarianism" of the Puritan era. Rochester embodied this new era, and he became as well known for his rakish lifestyle as for his poetry, although the two were often interlinked. He died as a result of a sexually transmitted infection at the age of 33.
Edmund Waller, FRS was an English poet and politician who was Member of Parliament for various constituencies between 1624 and 1687, and one of the longest serving members of the English House of Commons.
Charles Middleton, 2nd Earl of Middleton, Jacobite 1st Earl of Monmouth, PC was a Scottish and English politician who held several offices under Charles II and James II & VII. He served as Secretary of State for Scotland, the Northern Department and the Southern Department, before acting as Jacobite Secretary of State and chief advisor to James II and then his son James III during their exile in France.
A libertine is a person questioning and challenging most moral principles, such as responsibility or sexual restraints, and will often declare these traits as unnecessary or undesirable or evil. A libertine is especially someone who ignores or even spurns accepted morals and forms of behaviour observed by the larger society. The values and practices of libertines are known collectively as libertinism or libertinage and are described as an extreme form of hedonism or liberalism. Libertines put value on physical pleasures, meaning those experienced through the senses. As a philosophy, libertinism gained new-found adherents in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, particularly in France and Great Britain. Notable among these were John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, and the Marquis de Sade.
John Dalrymple, 1st Earl of Stair PC was a Scottish politician and lawyer. As Joint Secretary of State in Scotland 1691–1695, he played a key role in suppressing the Jacobite rising of 1689 and was forced to resign in 1695 for his part in the Massacre of Glencoe. Restored to favour under Queen Anne in 1702 and made Earl of Stair in 1703, he was closely involved in negotiations over the 1707 Acts of Union that created the Kingdom of Great Britain but died on 8 January 1707, several months before the Act became law.
The Surveyor-General of the Ordnance was a subordinate of the Master-General of the Ordnance and a member of the Board of Ordnance, a British government body, from its constitution in 1597. Appointments to the post were made by the crown under Letters Patent. His duties were to examine the ordnance received to see that it was of good quality. He also came to be responsible for the mapping of fortifications and eventually of all Great Britain, through the Ordnance Survey, and it is this role that is generally associated with surveyor-generalship.
Restoration literature is the English literature written during the historical period commonly referred to as the English Restoration (1660–1688), which corresponds to the last years of Stuart reign in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. In general, the term is used to denote roughly homogenous styles of literature that centre on a celebration of or reaction to the restored court of Charles II. It is a literature that includes extremes, for it encompasses both Paradise Lost and the Earl of Rochester's Sodom, the high-spirited sexual comedy of The Country Wife and the moral wisdom of The Pilgrim's Progress. It saw Locke's Treatises of Government, the founding of the Royal Society, the experiments and holy meditations of Robert Boyle, the hysterical attacks on theatres from Jeremy Collier, and the pioneering of literary criticism from John Dryden and John Dennis. The period witnessed news becoming a commodity, the essay developing into a periodical art form, and the beginnings of textual criticism.
Robert Gould was a significant voice in Restoration poetry in England.
Anne Scott, 1st Duchess of Buccleuch was a wealthy Scottish peeress. After her father died when she was a few months old, and her sisters by the time she was 10, she inherited the family's titles. She was married to James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth, and the couple had six children, only two of whom survived past infancy.
Anne Killigrew (1660–1685) was an English poet and painter, described by contemporaries as "A Grace for beauty, and a Muse for wit." Born in London, she and her family were active in literary and court circles. Killigrew's poems were circulated in manuscript and collected and published posthumously in 1686 after she died from smallpox at age 25. They have been reprinted several times by modern scholars, most recently and thoroughly by Margaret J. M. Ezell.
Major-General George Douglas, 1st Earl of Dumbarton KT was a Scottish military officer who spent much of his career in the service of King Louis XIV. In 1678, he returned to England; as a Catholic, he was a trusted servant of King James II and went into exile with him after the 1688 Glorious Revolution. He died at the palace of St Germain-en-Laye in March, 1692.
Sarah Fyge Egerton (1668–1723) was an English poet who wrote in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In her works The Female Advocate and Poems on Several Occasions, Egerton wrote about gender, friendship, marriage, religion, education, politics, and other topics. She is chiefly known as the spirited teen who responded in defense of women to Robert Gould's misogynist satire.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nathaniel Ingelo was an English clergyman, writer and musician, best known for the allegorical romance Bentivolio and Urania.
Nationality words link to articles concerning that nation's poetry or literature.
Anthony Hammond (1668–1738), of Somersham Place, Somersham, Huntingdonshire and Lidlington, Bedfordshire, was an English official and Tory politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons between 1695 and 1708. He was also known as a poet and pamphleteer.
The Whores' Petition was a satirical letter addressed from brothel owners and prostitutes affected by the Bawdy House Riots of 1668, to Lady Castlemaine, lover of King Charles II of England. It requested that she come to the aid of her "sisters" and pay for the rebuilding of their property and livelihoods. Addressed from madams such as Damaris Page and Elizabeth Cresswell, it sought to mock the perceived extravagance and licentiousness of Castlemaine and the royal court.
Timothy J. G. Harris is an historian of Later Stuart Britain.
The Ambitious Statesman; Or, The Loyal Favourite is a 1679 tragedy by the English writer John Crowne. It was originally staged by the King's Company at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London. The original cast is unknown except for Joseph Haines who played La Marre, and also spoke the epilogue.
Thyestes, A Tragedy is a 1680 tragedy by the English writer John Crowne. It was originally staged by the King's Company at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. The original cast is unknown. It is based on Thyestes by Seneca.