Girls and Sexuality in Seventeenth-Century Love Lyrics

IF 0.2 3区文学 Q2 Arts and Humanities

STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 1500-1900 Pub Date : 2019-03-02 DOI:10.1353/SEL.2019.0007

J. Higginbotham

引用次数: 1

Abstract

Abstract:Why does the term "girl" in early modern discourse designate both female children and fallen women, emblems of sexual innocence and emblems of promiscuity? This article investigates girlish sexuality in the love lyrics of Andrew Marvell and Edmund Waller. Extending the trope of the young and unattainable woman backward in time to her childhood, these poets play with the slippage between "girl" as a father's term of affection and "girl" as a lover's endearment. If the mistresses of Petrarchan convention were unattainable because they consciously withheld sexual favors, the little mistresses of Marvell and Waller were even more so. I argue that it is precisely because these poets constructed female children as innocent and pure that they became objects of erotic attraction for adult men.

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17世纪爱情抒情诗中的女孩与性

摘要:为什么“女孩”一词在现代早期话语中既指代女性儿童，又指代堕落的女性，既是性纯真的象征，又是滥交的象征?本文研究了安德鲁·马维尔和埃德蒙·沃勒的情诗中的少女性。这些诗人将年轻而高不可攀的女人的比喻延伸到她的童年时代，在“女孩”作为父亲的情感术语和“女孩”作为情人的亲密关系之间滑动。如果说彼得拉克传统的情妇是由于她们有意识地拒绝性行为而难以获得的话，那么马维尔和沃勒的小情妇更是如此。我认为，正是因为这些诗人把女性儿童塑造成天真纯洁的形象，她们才成为成年男性的情欲吸引对象。

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来源期刊

STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 1500-1900 LITERATURE, BRITISH ISLES-

CiteScore

0.40

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： SEL focuses on four fields of British literature in rotating, quarterly issues: English Renaissance, Tudor and Stuart Drama, Restoration and Eighteenth Century, and Nineteenth Century. The editors select learned, readable papers that contribute significantly to the understanding of British literature from 1500 to 1900. SEL is well known for thecommissioned omnibus review of recent studies in the field that is included in each issue. In a single volume, readers might find an argument for attributing a previously unknown work to Shakespeare or de-attributing a famous work from Milton, a study ofthe connections between class and genre in the Restoration Theater.