The moralistic tendencies that culminated in the Republic of Virtue can be traced in literature back to the late seventeenth century. In the 1690s two separate and antithetical moralities began to take shape, one erotic and libertine, the other highly moralistic. Both represented a revolt against the formalism of the seventeenth century. The roman rotique was rooted in a hedonistic philosophy whose objective was to enlarge the scope of freedom,...