The Construction of Gender and Sexuality through Various Discourses on Female Homosexuality in Modern Britain

本研究项目旨在研究现代英国性别建构的方式，与当时的性观念，特别是女性同性恋的关系。更具体地说，本研究通过对古希腊女诗人萨福和奥维德人萨福的各种话语，对女性同性恋的话语，以及英国女诗人萨福的诗歌话语进行了研究。“到目前为止，人们一直认为，性行为和同性恋的概念直到世纪末才在欧洲出现。然而，目前的研究确定，“萨福主义”和“萨福主义者”这两个术语在18世纪末的英国与现代的用法相似，从萨福到现在的女同性恋传统已经被详细地记录下来。另一方面，两个女人之间的依恋，无论多么强烈，往往被誉为无性的“浪漫友谊”。“研究成果的第一章分析了关于共同生活了50多年的Llanguages女士的女性同性恋的冲突话语（”浪漫的友谊“和”Sapphism“），揭示了新性别的兴起与浪漫时期女性性观念变化的特殊关系。第二章论证了被后人称为“英国的萨福”的安娜·苏厄德是一位继承了萨福传统的诗人，因为她的爱情诗和萨福的诗歌一样，都是由对缺席的女性所爱的热切渴望和思念，以及失去的时间和失去的快乐所创造的。第三章重点分析了苏厄德的《路易莎》，并分析了它是如何将自己呈现为一个异性恋的爱情故事，同时将女主人公浪漫的女性友谊置于她的异性恋浪漫爱情和婚姻之上的。这部充满诗意的小说也说明了十八世纪晚期女同性恋的一个方面，这是与异性恋社会兼容。

This research project aimed to examine the ways in which gender was constructed in modern Britain, in relation to the idea of sexuality of the time, female homosexuality in particular. More specifically, this research investigates through various discourses about the Ancient Greek woman poet Sappho and the Ovidian Sappho, discourses on female homesexuality, and the poetic discourses of British women poets called "Sappho."It has been hitherto argued that the concepts of sexuality and homosexuality had not appeared until late nineteenth century in Europe. The current research, however, ascertained that the terms ‘Sapphism' and ‘Sapphist' had been used in late eighteenth-century Britain similar to their use in modern times, and the lesbian tradition from Sappho to the present had been sarcastically noted. On the other hand, the attachments between two women, however intense, were often rather celebrated as asexual "romantic friendship." Chapter one of the research results analyzes the conflicting discourses of female homesexuality (‘romantic friendship' and ‘Sapphism') concerning the Ladies of Llangollen, who lived together for over fifty years, bringing to light the particular relation of the rise of new gender to the changed view of female sexuality in the Romantic period. Chapter two verifies that Anna Seward, posthumously called "the British Sappho," was a poet in the tradition of Sappho of Lesbos, as her love poetry was, like Sappho's poetry, created by a fervent longing and yearning for the absent female beloved, as well as lost time and lost pleasure. Chapter three highlights Seward's Louisa and examines the ways in which it seemingly presents itself as a heterosexual love story, while setting the heroine's romantic female friendship above her heterosexual romantic love and marriage. This poetic novel also illustrates an aspect of late eighteenth-century lesbianism which was compatible with heterosexual society.