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

在世界上最古老的情色诗歌中恢复女性性欲的声音。

• 批准号: 2435234
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Oxford
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2020 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2435234
• 关键词: Recovering; Voices; Female; Sexuality; World

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

我的研究的目的是对Inanna-Dumuzi“情歌”进行首次广泛的文学和理论分析（Sefati 1998），这是最早具有高度色情语言和女性性表达的文学文本。他们用苏美尔语是世界上最古老的书面语言，它使用了苏美尔人的特定“女性”方言，主要是为诗歌中女性的声音，哀叹文本和女性之间的对话文本（Krecher 1967; Schretter 1990; Matuszak 1990; Matuszak 2016; Sefati 1998; Sefati 1998''。这些文本在公元前第二千年开始时写在旧的巴比伦时期，表现出罕见的女性声音和表达坦率的性爱，在大约4000年前写的文学中对我们来说非常了不起。 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年，1987年，1993年因此，已经假定它们具有主要的邪教功能。我打算挑战苏美尔“情歌”与'神圣婚姻'的制度相吻合的方法，后者不仅使他们的文学价值黯然失色，而且使他们明确表达女性在古代近东的性生活经历的重要性。因此，该项目将采用三倍的方法来解决以下内容：1。这些歌曲与“神圣的婚姻仪式”有什么关系？ 1.1现代奖学金如何接受“神圣婚姻仪式”的方式以及为什么？ 1。2“情歌”的哪些元素与公元前3千年和第二千年初的邪教和仪式文本共享？ 1.3文本的手稿中是否有变体，并且这些与可靠性有关吗？ 1。4有什么证据表明“神圣的婚姻仪式”根本进行了？ 建立“情歌”与“神圣婚姻”之间的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，“情歌”被指控以色情主义，因为对（女性）性欲的隐喻密度很高。使用现代概念隐喻理论，我将完成对“情歌”中每个隐喻的分析。这项对隐喻的研究将对苏美尔诗歌中对隐喻和图像的更广泛理解有重大贡献：2.1隐喻在苏美尔人中有何作用？ 2.2 Sumerian中的隐喻和比喻之间有区别吗？ 它将通过重点关注以下主要问题来做到这一点：2。3隐喻在“情歌”中如何形成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？ 2.4.1什么是被隐喻的？如何？ 2.4.2“情歌”中的隐喻是独一无二的，还是它们已经属于隐喻的文学目录？ 2.4.3是否有用于表达特定女性情绪和动作的诗意记录和隐喻目录？最后，该项目将强调和评估这些早期文学文本的非凡女性声音：3。女性声音可以从Inanna-Dumuzi文本中恢复吗？ 3。1。其他美索不达米亚文本的“雄心勃勃”声音与“情歌”的“ gynpentric”声音之间的语言和风格的主要区别是什么？ 3.2是否有可能在“情歌”中女性身体的表现是男性注视的对象（Mulvey 1975）3。3 3。3。 3.4女性写的现代色情能否阐明“爱”中的女性声音