ABSTRACT
Given Rochester’s undisputed status as ‘one of the dirtiest poets in the canon’ (Porter 1982:61), one might have thought any sustained consideration of his work would at some point involve detailed analysis of the issue of misogyny. This has not, however, proved to be the case. It is not that feminist criticism has neglected his writing: in the last twenty years, Fabricant (1974), Wilcoxon (1979), Wintle (1982) and Nussbaum (1984) have all provided illuminating commentaries. Yet compared to the attention devoted to the niceties of satiric form or the problems of textual attribution, this aspect of his work has suffered at least comparative neglect.
