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Laura Linker. Dangerous Women, Libertine Epicures, and the Rise of Sensibility, 1670-1730. Ashgate, 2011. 184 pp. index, bibl. £55 (cloth). ISBN: 9781409418115.
Laura Linker's Dangerous Women, Libertine Epicures, and the Rise of Sensibility takes as its subject the figure of the female libertine. Libertinism, of course, has been the subject of sev- eral major scholarly works, including Harold Weber's The Restoration Rake-Hero (1986), Warren Chernaik's Sexual Freedom in Restoration Literature (1995), and James Turner's Lib- ertines and Radicals in Early Modern London (2002). Until now, though, little critical work has focused on the female libertine. In fact, when previous studies have paid any attention to this figure, they have referenced her only briefly, as an anomaly. As Linker shows, though, female libertines were much discussed in late seventeenth-century England. Particularly in the debates surrounding Charles lis mistresses, wanton women became a frequent topic of public discourse, with many satirical texts of the period targeting figures like Barbara Palmer, the Duchess of Cleveland, and Louise de Keroualle, the Duchess of Portsmouth.
Linker traces a different philosophical genealogy for libertinism than other scholars have sketched. Whereas previous work has tended to figure libertinism as an extension of Hobbes- ian principles, Linker focuses on libertinism's links to Lucretius, and particularly to Thomas Creech's popular English translation of Lucretius's De rerum natura. Several late-seventeenth century writers were involved with the translation, and Linker contends that it "appealed to a number of authors, particularly women" (4). Linker points...