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

这个研究项目的目的是研究性别在现代英国被建构的方式，与当时的性观念有关，尤其是女同性恋。更具体地说，本研究通过对古希腊女诗人萨福和奥维德女诗人萨福的各种话语、关于女性性取向的话语以及英国女诗人萨福的诗歌话语进行研究。“迄今为止，人们一直认为性和同性恋的概念直到19世纪晚期才出现在欧洲。然而，目前的研究确定，在18世纪晚期的英国，“萨福主义”和“萨福主义者”这两个词的用法与现代相似，从萨福到现在的女同性恋传统被讽刺地注意到。另一方面，两个女人之间的依恋，无论多么强烈，往往被称为无性的“浪漫友谊”。第一章的研究成果分析了在一起生活了50多年的兰戈伦女士们关于女性性取向的矛盾话语（“浪漫的友谊”和“萨芬主义”），揭示了新性别的兴起与浪漫主义时期女性性观念的变化之间的特殊关系。第二章证实了安娜·苏厄德是一位继承了莱斯沃斯岛萨福传统的诗人，被后人称为“英国萨福”，因为她的爱情诗和萨福的爱情诗一样，都是出于对缺席的心爱女性的强烈渴望和向往，以及对失去的时间和快乐的怀念。第三章重点介绍了苏厄德的《路易莎》，并考察了它似乎是一个异性恋爱情故事的表现方式，同时把女主角浪漫的女性友谊置于她异性恋的浪漫爱情和婚姻之上。这部诗意的小说也说明了18世纪晚期女同性恋与异性恋社会相容的一个方面。

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.