Daniel Gustafson

Lothario’s Corpse explores the persistent appeal of Restoration libertine drama (and its absolutist heroes and scenarios of lawless license) in the century following its supposed disappearance from the British stage. Tracing the stage libertine’s haunting of post-1688 culture, Gustafson illustrates how its literary and political manifestations document a fantasy of sovereign power at the heart of the emergent liberal imagination.

1650-1850 publishes essays and reviews from and about a wide range of academic disciplines literature, philosophy, art history, history, religion, and science. Interdisciplinary in scope and approach, 1650-1850 emphasizes aesthetic manifestations and applications of ideas, and encourages studies that move between the arts and the sciences.