Commercialized Sexuality: The Early Nineteenth-Century British Women Poets and the Reception of the Classics

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24520324
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Literature in English
• Research Institution: Nagoya Keizai University
• Principal Investigator: KAWATSU Masae 名古屋経済大学, 法学部, 教授 (30278387)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 英文学 / 西洋古典 / セクシュアリティ / ジェンダー

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The ideal woman in the Victorian era was expected to be angelic, innocent and chaste, as clearly indicated in the popular term “The Angel in the House.” The current research examined women writers in the early nineteenth century from the viewpoint of the reception of the classics to illustrate that their works had already shown a tendency to desexualize women. The way women poets such as Felicia Hemans and Letitia Elizabeth Landon, in particular, popularized and commercialized Ovidian Sappho corresponded to the way a discourse on female desexualization was spreading into British society and culture at that time. A close examination of the correlation between women poets’ treatment of Ovidian Sappho and the prevailing discourse of female desexualization revealed the actual condition of the commercialization of female sexuality in the early nineteenth century.

Free Research Field

英文学