Recovering the Voices of Female Sexuality in the World's Oldest Erotic Poetry.

我的研究目的是对伊娜娜-杜穆子的《情歌》(Sefati 1998)进行第一次广泛的文学和理论分析，这是最早的文学文本，分享了高度色情的语言和对女性性行为的表达。它们以苏美尔语--世界上最古老的书面语言--编写，使用埃米萨尔语，这是苏美尔语的一种特殊的女性方言，主要在诗歌、哀歌文本和妇女之间的对话文本中为妇女的声音保留(Krecher 1967；Schretter 1990；Matuszak 2016；Sefati 1998)。这些文本写于公元前2世纪初的古巴比伦时期，展示了罕见的女性声音和坦率的性享受表达，在近4000年前的文学作品中对我们来说是非凡的。然而，对《情歌》的研究在很大程度上是对女性角色的经历进行的，到目前为止，学者们只对这些文本进行了文献学研究，他们将这些经文作为“神圣的婚姻仪式”(Kramer，1963,1969；Sefati 1998)的证据，这是一种涉及苏美尔国王和女神伊娜娜的性结合的生育仪式，显然是由女祭司扮演的角色(Frazer 1959；Renger 1975；Hallo 1987；Coper 1993；Steinkeller 1999；Linkapivi 2008；Nissinen and Uro 2008)。因此，它们被认为具有主要的祭祀功能。我打算挑战将苏美尔人的“情歌”与“神圣婚姻”制度相结合的做法，这种制度不仅掩盖了它们的文学价值，也掩盖了它们明确呈现古代近东女性性爱经验的重要性。因此，该项目将采取三个方面的方法来解决以下问题：1.这些歌曲与“神圣的婚姻仪式”有什么关系？1.1“神圣的婚姻仪式”是如何以及为什么被现代学术界接受的？1.2“情歌”中的哪些元素与公元前3世纪末和2世纪初的宗教和仪式文本相同？1.3这些文本的手稿中有没有变种，这些变体与出处有关吗？1.有什么证据表明“神圣的婚姻仪式”曾经举行过？在《情歌》和《神圣的婚姻》之间建立一种脱节将使我的项目专注于以下问题：2.隐喻、诗歌和女性性欲由于对(女性)性欲的高密度隐喻，《情歌》被指控带有色情色彩。运用现代概念隐喻理论，对《情歌》中的每一个隐喻进行分析。对隐喻的研究将有助于更广泛地理解苏美尔语诗歌中的隐喻和意象：2.1隐喻是如何在苏美尔语中起作用的？2.2苏美尔语中的隐喻和明喻之间有区别吗？本研究将集中探讨以下主要问题：2.3《情歌》中的隐喻如何塑造和表现女性对性和欲望的体验？2.4《情歌》中隐喻的形式和功能是什么？2.4.1《情歌》中的隐喻是什么以及如何隐喻？2.4.2《情歌》中的隐喻是独一无二的，还是已经属于隐喻的文学类别？2.4.3是否有诗意的语域和隐喻目录用来表达特定的女性情感和行为？最后，该项目将强调和评估这些早期文学文本中非凡的女性声音：3.伊娜娜-杜穆兹文本中能恢复女性的声音吗？3.1.美索不达米亚其他文本中以男性为中心的声音与《情歌》中的女性中心声音在语言和风格上的主要区别是什么？3.2《情歌》中女性身体的表现有没有可能是男性凝视的对象(穆尔维1975)3.在其他古代文化中女性的声音是如何表达的？3.4现代女性写的色情能否阐明《爱情之歌》中的女性声音

The aim of my research is to conduct the first extensive literary and theoretical analysis of the Inanna-Dumuzi "Love Songs" (Sefati 1998), the earliest literary texts that share highly erotic language and expressions of female sexuality. Written in Sumerian, the world's oldest written language, they use Emesal, a specific 'female' dialect of Sumerian reserved primarily for the voices of women in poetry, lamentation texts and dialogue texts between women (Krecher 1967; Schretter 1990; Matuszak 2016; Sefati 1998). Written in the Old Babylonian period at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC, these texts exhibit rare female voices and expressions of a frank enjoyment of sex, remarkable to us in literature written almost 4000 years ago. However, the study of the "Love Songs" has been largely disinterested in the experience of the female characters and have so far only been studied philologically by scholars who have situated these texts as evidence for the 'Sacred Marriage Ritual' (Kramer, 1963, 1969; Sefati 1998), a fertility rite involving the sexual union of a Sumerian king and the goddess Inanna, a role apparently played by a priestess (Frazer 1959; Renger 1975; Hallo 1987; Cooper 1993; Steinkeller 1999; Lapinkivi 2008; Nissinen and Uro 2008). Thus, they have been assumed to have a primarily cultic function. I intend to challenge the approach that has aligned the Sumerian "Love Songs" with the institution of the 'Sacred Marriage', which has eclipsed not only their literary merit, but the importance of their explicit presentation of female experience of sex in the Ancient Near East. The project will therefore take a threefold approach that addresses the following: 1. What do these songs have to do with the 'Sacred Marriage Ritual'? 1.1 How and why has the 'Sacred Marriage Ritual' come to be accepted in modern scholarship? 1. 2 What elements of the "Love Songs" are shared with cultic and ritual texts of the late 3rd and early 2nd millennium BC? 1.3 Are there variants in manuscripts of the texts, and are these related to provenience? 1. 4 What evidence is there that a 'Sacred Marriage Ritual' was performed at all? Establishing a disconnect between the "Love Songs" and the 'Sacred Marriage' will allow my project to focus on the following questions: 2. Metaphor, Poetry, and Female Sexual Desire The "Love Songs" are charged with eroticism because of the high density of metaphors for (female) sexual desire. Using modern conceptual metaphor theory, I will complete the analysis of every metaphor in the "Love Songs". This study of metaphor will contribute significantly to the wider understanding of metaphor and imagery in Sumerian poetry asking: 2.1 How does metaphor work in Sumerian? 2.2 Is there a difference between metaphor and simile in Sumerian? It will do this by focussing in on the following primary questions: 2. 3 How does metaphor shape and represent female experience of sex and desire in the "Love Songs"? 2.4 What is the form and function of metaphor in the "Love Songs"? 2.4.1 What is being metaphorised and how? 2.4.2 Are the metaphors in the "Love Songs" unique, or do they already belong to a literary catalogue of metaphor? 2.4.3 Is there a poetic register and metaphorical catalogue used to express specific female emotions and actions? Finally, the project will emphasise and assess the extraordinary female voice of these early literary texts: 3.Can a Female Voice be recovered from the Inanna-Dumuzi texts? 3. 1. What are the main differences in language and style between 'androcentric' voices of other Mesopotamian texts and the 'gynocentric' voices of the "Love Songs"? 3.2 Is there a possibility that the representations of the female body in the "Love Songs" are objects of the Male Gaze (Mulvey 1975) 3. 3 How are the voices of women expressed in other ancient cultures? 3.4 Can modern eroticism written by women elucidate the female voices in the "Love