The Libertine’s Nemesis the Prude in Clarissa and the Roman Libertin: The Prude in Clarissa and the Roman Libertin

This book discusses Fowler’s thesis on the establishment of a symbiotic relationship between the libertine and the prude in a number of key eighteenth-century texts. He stresses that prude and libertine need each other to define themselves, a symbiosis most graphically enacted in the Sadean orgy.