Les Liaisons dangereuses (
Dangerous Liaisons, 1782), an
epistolary novel by
Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, is a trenchant description of sexual libertinism.
Wayland Young argues: "... the mere analysis of libertinism ... carried out by a novelist with such a prodigious command of his medium ... was enough to condemn it and play a large part in its destruction." '' by
Jacob Huysmans Agreeable to Calvin's emphasis on the need for uniformity of discipline in Geneva,
Samuel Rutherford (Professor of Divinity in the University of St. Andrews, and Christian minister in 17th-century Scotland) offered a rigorous treatment of "Libertinism" in his polemical work "A Free Disputation Against Pretended Liberty of Conscience" (1649).
A Satyr Against Reason and Mankind is a poem by John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester which addresses the question of the proper use of
reason, and is generally assumed to be a
Hobbesian critique of
rationalism. The narrator subordinates reason to sense. It is based to some extent on
Boileau's version of
Juvenal's eighth or fifteenth satire, and is also indebted to Hobbes,
Montaigne,
Lucretius, and
Epicurus, as well as the general libertine tradition. It criticises the vanities and corruptions of the statesmen and politicians of the court of Charles II. The
libertine novel was a primarily
18th-century literary genre of which the roots lay in the European but mainly French libertine tradition. The genre effectively ended with the
French Revolution. Themes of libertine novels were
anti-clericalism,
anti-establishment and
eroticism. Authors include
Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon (''
Les Égarements du cœur et de l'esprit, 1736; Le Sopha, conte moral, 1742), Denis Diderot (Les bijoux indiscrets, 1748), Marquis de Sade (L'Histoire de Juliette, 1797–1801), Choderlos de Laclos (Les Liaisons dangereuses, 1782), and John Wilmot (Sodom, or the Quintessence of Debauchery'', 1684). Other famous titles are
Histoire de Dom Bougre, Portier des Chartreux (1741) and
Thérèse Philosophe (1748). Precursors to the libertine writers were
Théophile de Viau (1590–1626) and
Charles de Saint-Evremond (1610–1703), who were inspired by
Epicurus and the publication of
Petronius.
Robert Darnton is a cultural historian who has covered this genre extensively. A three-part essay in
The Book Collector by David Foxen explores libertine literature in England, 1660-1745. Critics have been divided as to the literary merits of
William Hazlitt's
Liber Amoris, a deeply personal account of frustrated love that is quite unlike anything else Hazlitt ever wrote. Wardle suggests that it was compelling but marred by sickly sentimentality, and also proposes that Hazlitt might even have been anticipating some of the experiments in chronology made by later novelists. One or two positive reviews appeared, such as the one in the
Globe, 7 June 1823: "The
Liber Amoris is unique in the English language; and as, possibly, the first book in its fervour, its vehemency, and its careless exposure of passion and weakness—of sentiments and sensations which the common race of mankind seek most studiously to mystify or conceal—that exhibits a portion of the most distinguishing characteristics of Rousseau, it ought to be generally praised".
Dan Cruickshank in his book ''London's Sinful Secret'' summarized Hazlitt's infatuation stating: "Decades after her death Batsy (Careless) still haunted the imagination of the essayist William Hazlitt, a man who lodged near Covent Garden during the 1820s, where he became unpleasantly intimate with the social consequences of unconventional sexual obsession that he revealed in his
Liber Amoris of 1823, in which he candidly confessed to his infatuation with his landlord's young daughter." == Philosophy ==