"'if buizy Love intrenches': Adorno and Rochester on Pleasure and Love

Authors

  • Lacey Ann Conley Loyola University Chicago

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25071/2369-7326.34296

Abstract

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester presents in his poetry an enigmatic and seemingly contradictory worldview that is a common topic of discussion amongst his critics. Marianne Thormählen talks about a “fundamental paradox that confronts a student of Rochester’s stances and values as expressed in his verse” which is that “the mind pursues satisfaction through the body;” but “minds are particularly unreliable guides and bodies are lamentably fallible” (27). Paul Hammond further argues, “His poetry often disturbs […] continuity through the fragmentation of experience into discrete moments which may be severed from any possible narrative” (49). It makes sense then that a body of work lacking narrative continuity can best be analyzed through the application of a theory that shares the same fragmented construction. Hammond’s description of Rochester’s poetry sounds a great deal like Devra Lee Davis’ assertion about Theodor Adorno that “His [thought] models are not duplicable, system-bound expressions: they are moments, expressions, and sketches,” and are arguably “mood betraying.” She goes on to describe his writing as an “orchestrated cacophony of outrage” (396), as if the author’s mood itself were the center of the interpretation, which is then “orchestrated” around it.

From these critical observations it can be concluded that Rochester and Adorno are both notable for an intense authorial presence in their writing, revealing inconsistencies that can only come from the changeability of an active, individual mind that is not content with constructions of abstract theory, but also insists on the importance of individual experience. For Adorno, critical theory is only valuable when it considers specificity and difference, which makes his theory an ideal approach to consider the writing of the Earl of Rochester. Using Adorno’s Minima Moralia alongside a selection of Rochester’s poems, this study examines the interesting intersections in the observations and beliefs of Adorno and Rochester, specifically as they are expressed in ideas about sex, pleasure, and love, and explores the implications of these shared viewpoints as they manifest themselves in Rochester’s life and work.

Author Biography

Lacey Ann Conley, Loyola University Chicago

Loyola University Chicago

Department of English

PhD Candidate, ABD

References

Adorno, Theodor. Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life. London: Verso, 2005. Print.

Davis, Devra Lee. “Theodor W. Adorno: Theoretician through Negations.” Theory and Society 2.3 (1975): 389-400. Web. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00212744

Fisher, Nicholas and Matt Jenkinson. “Rochester and the Specter of Libertinism.” Huntington Library Quarterly 70.4 (2007): 537-552. Web. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/hlq.2007.70.4.537

Griffin, Dustin H. Satires Against Man: The Poems of Rochester. Berkeley: U of California P, 1973. Print.

Hammond, Paul. “Rochester’s Homoeroticism.” That Second Bottle: Essays on John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. Ed. Nicholas Fisher. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2000. 47-62. Print.

Kreeft, Peter. Christianity for Modern Pagans: Pascal’s Pensées Edited, Outlined & Explained. San Francisco: Ignatius, 1966. Print.

Pepper, Thomas. “Guilt By (Un) Free Association: Adorno on Romance et al.” MLN 109.5 (1994): 913-937. Web. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/2904712

Rochester, John Wilmot Earl of. The Works of John Wilmot Earl of Rochester. Ed. Harold Love. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999. Print.

Sanchez, Mellisa P. “Libertinism and Romance in Rochester's Poetry.” Eighteenth Century Studies 38.3 (2005): 441-459. Web. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/ecs.2005.0029

Thomson, Alex. Adorno: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Continuum, 2006. Print.

Thormählen, Marianne. “Dissolver of Reason: Rochester and the Nature of Love.” That Second Bottle: Essays on John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. Ed. Nicholas Fisher. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2000. 21-34. Print.

Wilcoxon, Reba. “Rochester’s Philosophical Premises: A Case for Consistency.” Eighteenth Century Studies 8.2 (1974-5): 183-210. Web. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/2737583

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Published

2013-03-26

How to Cite

Conley, L. A. (2013). "’if buizy Love intrenches’: Adorno and Rochester on Pleasure and Love. Pivot: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies and Thought, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.25071/2369-7326.34296

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Section

Critical Articles