"If I by miracle can be
This livelong minute true to thee
'Tis all that heav'n allows."
The Earl of Rochester was England's first celebrity poet, a man who
epitomized the theatricality, licentiousness, and skepticism of the
Restoration age. But his scandalous reputation belies the variety and
sophistication of his work: his love poems set new standards not only
for sexual explicitness but also for psychological acuity and lyric
grace, while his satires broke new ground as much by the refinement of
their ironies as by the brutality of their invective.
A fascinatingly contradictory figure, Rochester emerges more clearly
than ever from this new edition, the first selection of his work in
modern spelling to take account of recent revolutionary advances in
textual scholarship. It includes only poems now securely attributed to
the poet, in texts based not on the posthumous and unreliable printed
editions but on the most authoritative manuscripts which circulated in
his lifetime.
Paul Davis's superb Introduction places Rochester within the larger
intellectual movement of libertinism, and his notes help readers
unfamiliar with Restoration usage to catch the subtler connotations of
words and phrases. Of particular interest, Davis includes in the notes
the texts of the poems that Rochester translated and imitated,
illuminating Rochester's creatively intricate involvement with the work
of his ancient and modern counterparts, a crucial aspect of his poetic
genius.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has
made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the
globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to
scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other
valuable features, including expert introductions by leading
authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date
bibliographies for further study, and much more.
