"Queering the Simile: Expressing Gender and Sexuality Through Poetic Language"

我的项目横跨比较文学研究、经典和古典接受，将提出以下问题：明喻的形象在历史上如何为诗人提供了逃避诗歌语言中准确定义和意义的方法？这个比喻如何允许身份的不一致表达，以及它未来的理论努力可以是什么？我的目的不仅是考虑比喻在描绘古代文学中不一致的身份方面的作用，而且还推断和讨论它如何能够和已经被现代作家利用，以及它的未来潜力。作为第一步，我将分析和评估比喻在古代修辞学和现代文学理论中是如何概念化的。亚里士多德在《修辞学》和《诗学》中将比喻定义为一种更具解释力的更长的隐喻，这往往导致人们将比喻理解为一种简单的修辞手法：然而，不同的研究不仅强调了比喻在颠倒古典文学中设定的性别惯例方面的作用(Foley 1978)，而且强调了它在描述二元之外的身份的潜力(Corbeill 2015)。然后，通过现代理论视角分析古典修辞工具，为诗意言语及其在文本中的作用提供了新的理解：因此，我的目的是从古代对明喻的定义入手，然后利用后现代理论来复杂化它的现有意义。对语言的性别化性质的研究(Wittig 1985)也有助于我考虑诗歌表达对身份的形成和表征的影响，以及它在酷儿理论中的更广泛的价值。尽管过去有这样的学术研究，但比喻在提供超越二元的不同可能的未来和身份的视觉诉说方面所起的作用仍有待探索：这是我通过对酷儿作品的现代分析来实现的，为读者提供乌托邦的居住空间(Muñoz，2009)，从而在诗歌语言和文学中打开一个新的乌托邦表现世界。考虑到这一框架，我将分析比喻在一系列不同的经典文本(如《奥德赛》、《阿尔加索蒂卡》和《变形记》)中的作用，以及它们在现代接受中的作用(如玛吉·纳尔逊的《阿戈宇航员》，阿里·史密斯的《女孩遇见男孩》)。因此，我的项目的最后部分将探索在队列写作中为新的目的重新使用古典修辞手法的方法，通过了解队列的过去为队列体验开发新的途径(Love 2007)。因此，我的目标是重新评估古典语言，认为它为酷儿身份的栖息开辟了新的和未来的空间，基于诗意语言的乌托邦价值(巴特1953)。通过这个项目，我想继续在古典文学和它对当今酷儿写作的价值之间建立联系，正如詹妮弗·英格利哈特所说的那样，基于这样的想法：正如詹妮弗·英格利哈德所说，酷儿经典作为一门学科反思经典，并对其提出挑战。为此，我的目标是使用现代哲学、社会学和文学理论文本来重新评估和重新解释古典文本及其过去和更传统的学术，在我的方法论中有效地跨越经典、比较文学和古典接受。我在接受研究和重新评价古典语言方面的工作旨在为经典的奇怪的重新解释和使用开辟新的途径，参与当前文学理论的辩论，并与经典、经典的接受和比较文学研究交叉。

My project, which pans across comparative literature studies, classics, and classical reception, will ask the following questions: how has the figure of the simile historically provided poets with ways of evading precise definition and signification in poetic language? How does the simile allow for non-conforming expressions of identity, and what can its future theoretical endeavours be? I aim to not only consider the role of the simile in portraying non-conforming identities in ancient literature, but also to extrapolate and discuss how it can be and has been exploited by modern writers, as well as its future potentialities. As a first step, I will analyse and assess how the figure of the simile has been conceptualised in ancient rhetorics and modern literary theory. Aristotle's definition of it in the Rhetoric and the Poetics as a longer metaphor with greater explicatory powers has often led to an understanding of the simile as a 'simple' figure of speech: different studies have, however, highlighted not only the role of the simile in inverting set gender conventions in classical literature (Foley 1978), but also its potentialities for describing identities beyond the binary (Corbeill 2015). Analysing classical rhetorical tools through a modern theoretical lens, then, provides for new understandings of poetic speech and its role within the text: I thus aim to start from ancient definitions of the simile, to then utilize post-modern theory to complicate its current meaning. Studies on the gendered nature of language (Wittig 1985) will also aid me in considering the influence of poetic expression on the formation and representation of identity, and its value within queer theory more generally. Despite this past scholarship, the role the simile plays in offering a visual telling of different possible futures and identities beyond the binary is yet to be explored: this is something I aim to do through a modern analysis of queer writings as providing utopian spaces for readers to inhabit (Muñoz 2009), thus opening up a new utopian world of representation within poetic language and literature. With this framework in mind, I will then analyse the role of the simile as going beyond the simple binary of grammatical structures, in a series of different classical texts (such as the Odyssey, the Argonautica, and the Metamorphoses) and their modern reception (e.g. Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts, Ali Smith's Girl Meets Boy). The concluding part of my project will therefore explore ways of re-employing classical figures of speech for a new purpose in queer writing, developing new avenues for the queer experience through an understanding of its past (Love 2007). I thus aim to conclude with a reassessment of classical language as opening up new and future spaces for queer identities to inhabit, operating on the utopian value of poetic language (Barthes 1953).With this project, I then want to continuously draw out connections between classical literature and its value for queer writing today, operating on the idea that, as Jennifer Ingleheart puts it, 'Queer Classics reflects on, and provides a challenge to, Classics as a discipline'. To do so, I aim to employ modern philosophical, sociological and literary theory texts to re-asses and re-interpret classical texts and their past and more traditional scholarship, effectively moving across classics, comparative literature, and classical reception in my methodology. My work in reception studies and in the reassessment of classical language for future endeavors then aims to open up new avenues for queer reinterpretations and uses of the classics, engaging with current debates in literary theory and intersecting with both classics, their reception, and comparative literary studies