Lesbian Dames : Sapphism in the Long Eighteenth Century

How are romantic and erotic relationships between women represented in the literature of the long eighteenth century? How does Sapphism surface in other contemporary discourses, including politics, pornography, economics and art? After more than a generation of lesbian-gay scholarship that has examined identities, practices, prohibitions and transgressions surrounding same-sex desire, this collection offers an exciting and indispensable array of new scholarship in gender and sexuality studies. The contributors - who include noted writers, critics and historians such as Emma Donoghue, George E. Haggerty, Susan S. Lanser and Valerie Traub - provide varied and provocative research into the dynamics and histories of lesbianism and Sapphism. They build on the work of scholarship on Sapphism and interrogate the efficacy of such a notion in describing the varieties of same-sex love between women during the long eighteenth century. This groundbreaking collection, the first multi-authored volume to examine lesbian representation and culture in this era, presents a diversity of theoretical and critical approaches, from close literary analysis to the history of reading and publishing, psychoanalysis, biography, historicism, deconstruction and queer theory. Cover Contents Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction 1 ‘Friendship So Curst’: Amor Impossibilis, the Homoerotic Lament and the Nature of Lesbian Desire 2 A Crisis of Femininity: Re-Making Gender in Popular Discourse 3 Pornographic Homophobia: L’Academie des dames and the Deconstructing Lesbian 4 Unaccountable Women 5 Reforming the Coquette: Poly, Homo, Hetero in The Reform’d Coquet and The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless 6 The Odd Women: Charlotte Charke, Sarah Scott and the Metamorphoses of Sex 7 ‘Random Shafts of Malice?’: The Outings of Anne Damer 8 Women Beware Women: Female Gothic Villains and Victims 9 ‘Do you not know the quotation?’: Reading Anne Lister, Anne Lister Reading 10 Tory Lesbians: Economies of Intimacy and the Status of Desire Bibliography Index Lesbian Dames is the first multi-authored volume to examine the representation of lesbians and lesbianism in the literature and culture of the long eighteenth century. This groundbreaking collection presents a diversity of theoretical and critical approaches, from close literary analysis to the history of reading and publishing, psychoanalysis, biography, historicism, deconstruction and queer theory