Wanton Knowledge: Reading Lucretian Erotics in the Poetry of Aphra Behn and Lucy Hutchinson

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ABSTRACT Aphra Behn and Lucy Hutchinson are rarely discussed together. Despite both writing actively in the 1660s and 1670s, they are often associated with very different worlds – Behn, the often bawdy Restoration theatre and Libertinism; Hutchinson, religious piety and commitment to the republican cause during the Civil Wars and their aftermath. However, they both shared an interest in the Roman atomist and Epicurean poet Lucretius: Behn was a fierce advocate for the first complete published English translation of his De Rerum Natura and Hutchinson completed the first known English Language translation, which was not published until the 1990s. By focusing on Behn’s “To the Unknown Daphnis on his Excellent Translation of Lucretius” and Hutchinson’s elegies “The Night 8:th” and “Another Night ix:th”, I compare how these poems draw on Lucretian conceptions of the body, the void, and touch, establishing the various ways in which Lucretian thought influences both women’s eroticized poetry. Working against longstanding assumptions about Behn’s eroticism and Hutchinson’s perceived lack thereof, I argue that both poets find in Lucretius a “wanton” knowledge, an erotic knowing that influences their poetry and their representations of sex, love, and desire.