{"title":"Girls and Sexuality in Seventeenth-Century Love Lyrics","authors":"J. Higginbotham","doi":"10.1353/SEL.2019.0007","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"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.","PeriodicalId":45835,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 1500-1900","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2019-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 1500-1900","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/SEL.2019.0007","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"Arts and Humanities","Score":null,"Total":0}
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.
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.
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