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

我的研究的目的是进行第一次广泛的文学和理论分析的Inanna-Dumuzi“情歌”（Sefati 1998），最早的文学文本，共享高度色情的语言和表达女性性。他们用世界上最古老的书面语言苏美尔语写成，使用Emesal，这是苏美尔语的一种特殊的“女性”方言，主要用于诗歌，哀悼文本和女性之间的对话文本中的女性声音（Krecher 1967; Schretter 1990; Matuszak 2016; Sefati 1998）。这些文字写于公元前2000年初的古巴比伦时期，展现了罕见的女性声音和坦率的性享受的表达，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对女性角色的经历不感兴趣，迄今为止，只有那些将这些文本作为“神圣婚姻记录”证据的学者才对这些文本进行了文献学研究。（克雷默，1963，1969; Sefati 1998），一种涉及苏美尔国王和女神伊娜娜（显然是由女祭司扮演的角色）的性结合的生育仪式（弗雷泽1959; Renger 1975; Hallo 1987;库珀1993; Steinkeller 1999; Lapinkivi 2008; Nissinen and Uro 2008）。因此，他们被认为具有主要的邪教功能。我打算挑战将苏美尔人的“情歌”与“神圣的仪式”联系起来的方法，这不仅使它们的文学价值黯然失色，而且使它们明确呈现古代近东女性性经验的重要性黯然失色。因此，该项目将采取三重办法，解决以下问题：1。这些歌和“神圣的结婚仪式”有什么关系？1.1如何以及为什么“神圣的婚姻礼仪”来接受现代学术？1. 2《情歌》中的哪些元素与公元前3世纪末和公元前2世纪初的宗教和仪式文本相同？1.3在文本的手稿中是否有变体，这些变体与出处有关吗？1. 4.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”之间建立一个脱节，将使我的项目集中在以下问题上：2。隐喻、诗歌与女性性欲《情歌》中对女性性欲的隐喻密度很高，因此被赋予了色情色彩。运用现代概念隐喻理论，对《情歌》中的每一个隐喻进行分析。这种隐喻的研究将有助于更广泛地理解苏美尔诗歌中的隐喻和意象，并提出以下问题：2.1隐喻在苏美尔语中是如何工作的？2.2在苏美尔语中隐喻和比喻有区别吗？ 它将通过关注以下主要问题来做到这一点：2。3隐喻如何塑造和再现“情歌”中女性的性与欲望体验？2.4《情歌》中隐喻的形式和功能是什么？2.4.1什么是隐喻，如何隐喻？2.4.2《情歌》中的隐喻是独特的，还是已经属于文学隐喻的范畴？2.4.3是否有一个诗意的语域和隐喻的目录用来表达特定的女性情感和行动？最后，该项目将强调并评估这些早期文学文本中非凡的女性声音：3.可以从Inanna-Dumuzi文本中恢复女性声音吗？3. 1.其他美索不达米亚文本中的“男性中心”声音和“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有没有可能在“情歌”中的女性身体的表征是男性凝视的对象（Mulvey 1975）3。3.在其他古代文化中，女性的声音是如何表达的？3.4女性书写的现代色情文学能否阐释《爱》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