에로티시즘의 정치학: 로버트 헤릭의『헤스페리데스』를 통해 살펴본 성애와 죽음

This paper investigates the interconnectivity between Robert Herrick's anti-Puritan politics and his erotic poetry. Reinterpreting Hesperides through Georges Bataille's analysis of eroticism, this paper argues that Herrick's erotic poetry takes political dimension through its sketch of intermingling of eroticism with death at the moment of the decease of Royalist culture. Hesperides was published in 1648, a year before the decapitation of Charles I, when Herrick was ousted from his post of Dean Prior. Thus, not only Herrick's publication of Hesperides but also the erotic poetry in it should be seen as a declaration of political and poetical allegiance to the leadership of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. In his erotic poetry, Herrick brings into play religious rituals, eroticism, and death, through which the momentary perpetuity is led into the poetic world. This perpetual world governed by the rule of eroticism works as anti-Puritan as it fights against the changing power of Reformation. Thus, this paper implicates erotic poetry of Hesperides with the seventeenth-century political context and further attempts to see the volume as constituting an organic whole, not a jumble of variegated poetic moods and ideas. This paper investigates the interconnectivity between Robert Herrick's anti-Puritan politics and his erotic poetry. Reinterpreting Hesperides through Georges Bataille's analysis of eroticism, this paper argues that Herrick's erotic poetry takes political dimension through its sketch of intermingling of eroticism with death at the moment of the decease of Royalist culture. Hesperides was published in 1648, a year before the decapitation of Charles I, when Herrick was ousted from his post of Dean Prior. Thus, not only Herrick's publication of Hesperides but also the erotic poetry in it should be seen as a declaration of political and poetical allegiance to the leadership of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. In his erotic poetry, Herrick brings into play religious rituals, eroticism, and death, through which the momentary perpetuity is led into the poetic world. This perpetual world governed by the rule of eroticism works as anti-Puritan as it fights against the changing power of Reformation. Thus, this paper implicates erotic poetry of Hesperides with the seventeenth-century political context and further attempts to see the volume as constituting an organic whole, not a jumble of variegated poetic moods and ideas. KCI Citation Count: 1