Generic Failures and Imperfect Enjoyments: Rochester and the Anatomy of Impotence

Abstract

In the late seventeenth century, literary descriptions of sexual failure attempted to synthesize the latest developments in anatomical science and material philosophy. These branches of study pursued detailed accounts of passion and procreative capacity, including the many obstacles that stymied their perfect realization. Despite this interest in providing a comprehensive account of the body’s inner workings, both fields obscure the relationship between passionate feelings and bodily performance in matters of sex, relying instead on stylish hints and obfuscation. This article demonstrates how the silence around physical desire found in such thinkers as Regnier de Graaf and Walter Charleton found a voice in John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester’s poem “The Imperfect Enjoyment” and in the under-appreciated Rochesterian drama Sodom and Gomorah. These literary revisions of scientific inquiry use coital mishaps to explore the ways in which anatomical and philosophical models of sexual congress create and impinge upon sociality.