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

这项研究调查了18世纪文学、医学和艺术对肥胖女性的看法和描述，以及与那个时期“肥胖”的性别有关的描述。尽管“胖”格鲁吉亚女人无处不在，而且在文化焦虑中占有重要地位，但她一直被学术界忽视。一些学者(如维加雷洛2013年的“脂肪的蜕变：肥胖史”)发现了这些焦虑的根源，以及“胖”女人在维多利亚时代演变成一个令人厌恶的人物。正如我的研究所做的那样，分析她在格鲁吉亚时代的前史，消除了这些误解。在这个过程中，它解释了肥胖是如何与不充分的概念联系在一起的。本论文采用跨学科的研究方法，挖掘生活中和小说中的胖女人。它研究公共、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。该项目是对18世纪女性肥胖的第一次重大研究。来源材料包括：医学论文；以著名公众人物为特色的讽刺印刷品；戏剧性的“肥胖”女演员的肖像；私人通信和日记；以及文学文本。如上所述，缺乏关于女性肥胖的专门学术研究。然而，我将把我的工作放在与相关领域有关的地方，例如：关于“助产术”和“身体史”的学术(例如吉尔曼、图拉兰和维加雷洛)；“性别剪影”；以及“他者”理论。目前，最接近于考虑女性肥胖的学术观点出现在关于“身体意识形态”的文化视角上(例如布拉西尔和勒贝斯科)，而今天关于肥胖的“脂肪研究”(例如赫恩登)。参与这些领域的工作，我的目标是更严格地记录“肥胖”女性的历史，并挑战对女性肥胖态度转变的主流观点。

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.