"As plump as a partridge": Female Corpulence in Eighteenth-Century Literary and Visual Culture 1750- 1830

本研究调查了18世纪文学、医学和艺术对肥胖女性的看法和描述，以及与该时期“肥胖”性别的关系。“肥胖”的格鲁吉亚女性一直被学术界所忽视，尽管她无处不在，而且作为文化焦虑的一个场所很重要。学术研究（如维加雷洛2013年的《脂肪的变形：肥胖的历史》）发现了这些焦虑的根源，以及维多利亚时代“胖”女人变成令人厌恶的形象的原因。正如我的研究所做的那样，分析她在格鲁吉亚时代的前世史，消除了这些误解。在这个过程中，它解释了肥胖是如何与不足的概念联系在一起的。我的论文采用跨学科的方法来挖掘生活和小说中的“胖”女人。它审查公共、视觉和文学文化，并借鉴残疾研究、性别研究、文学批评和“肥胖研究”这一新学科的方法和见解。这个项目是对18世纪女性肥胖的第一个主要研究。来源材料包括：医学论文；以著名公众人物为主题的讽刺版画；“肥胖”女演员的戏剧肖像学私人信件和日记；还有文学作品。如上所述，缺乏专门研究女性肥胖的学术研究。然而，我将把我的工作定位在相关领域，如：“助产学”和“身体史”的奖学金（如吉尔曼、图拉兰和维加雷洛）；“性别轮廓”；以及“他者性”理论。目前，最接近于考虑女性肥胖的学术研究出现在“身体意识形态”的文化视角（例如Braziel和LeBesco），以及今天研究肥胖的“脂肪研究”（例如Herndon）。在从事这些领域的工作时，我的目标是更严格地将“肥胖”女性历史化，并挑战对女性肥胖态度转变的主流说法。

This research investigates eighteenth-century literary, medical and artistic perceptions and depictions ofthe corpulent woman in relation to the gendering of "obesity" in the period. The "fat" Georgian womanhas been neglected by scholarship despite her ubiquity and importance as a site of cultural anxiety.Scholarly accounts (e.g. Vigarello's 2013 The Metamorphoses of Fat: A History of Obesity) have detectedthe origins of these anxieties and the "fat" woman's morphing into a figure of distaste in the Victorianera. Analysing, as my research does, her pre-history in the Georgian era, dispels these misconceptions.In the process, it explains how obesity became linked with notions of inadequacy. My thesis adopts across-disciplinary approach in order to unearth the "fat" woman in life and in fiction. It examines public,visual and literary culture and draws on the methodologies and insights of disability studies, genderstudies, literary criticism and the new discipline of "fat studies".This project is the first major study of eighteenth-century female corpulence.Source material includes: medical treatises; satirical prints featuring notable public figures; theatricaliconography of "corpulent" actresses; private correspondence and diaries; and literary texts. As notedabove, there is a lack of dedicated scholarship on female corpulence. I will, however, situate my work inrelation to related fields, such as: scholarship on "midwifery" and "history of the body" (e.g. Gilman,Toulalan and Vigarello); the "gendered silhouette"; and theories of "otherness". At present, thescholarship that comes closest to considering female corpulence emerges from cultural perspectives on"body ideology" (e.g. Braziel and LeBesco), and "fat studies" work on obesity today (e.g. Herndon). Inengaging with work across these fields, I aim to more rigorously historicise the "obese" woman and tochallenge dominant accounts of shifting attitudes towards female corpulence.