The Politics of Sexual Libel: Royalist Propaganda in the 1640s

Jason McElligott explores the prevalence of sexual libel in the royalist newsbooks published secretly in London during the s, arguing that it was only one of several political and linguistic strategies deployed in these publications for discrediting the Parliamentarians. He notes that historians disdained to consider the newsbooks because of a preoccupation with smut and scatology in these publications; recent attention to sexual libel, however, may give it too dominant a position in royalist discourse. He analyzes the patterns of this material as well as the way it exploited known facts to show what sort of weapon it was in the royalist propaganda arsenal, but he also demonstrates, by analyzing the figurative treatment of the natural world and the Bible, that sexual libel was only a prominent part of a broader strategy to exploit popular belief and prejudice.        This content downloaded from 157.55.39.104 on Sun, 19 Jun 2016 05:56:45 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms