Sappho in Early Modern England: Female Same-Sex Literary Erotics 1550-1714 (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Sappho in Early Modern England: Female Same-Sex Literary Erotics 1550-1714 Dosia Reichardt Andreadis, Harriette, Sappho in Early Modern England: Female Same-Sex Literary Erotics 1550-1714 (The Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society), Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2001; paper; pp. xiii, 254; 9 b/w illustrations; RRP US$17; ISBN 02260200096. This study deals with the literary construction of female homosexuality in the period from 1550 to the first quarter of the eighteenth century. In the introductory chapter it is made clear that the book covers literary rather than historical practice. English female writers are discussed in depth, but the book also covers continental and classical influences on writers and readers. Professor Andreadis does not limit herself to the accounts of transgressive behaviour in conventional literary texts but includes travel narratives, anatomies, conduct books and other vernacular publications. The most interesting period, from the point of view of different configurations of erotic relationships, turns out to have been the mid-seventeenth century. By then, discourse about same-sex behaviour was becoming inhibited and existing literary forms, such as pastoral, were reshaped to provide a sort of coded vehicle for the expression of feelings that would not excite opprobrium. Here I was hoping to find out more about cross-dressing (women with cropped hair openly wearing swords) and other transgressive behaviours; vignettes of social life sometimes referred to in the poetry of the drolleries. The author's aim is to restore the complexity defining same-sex relations in the early-modern period, but principally from the female point of view. Katherine [End Page 188] Philips is an obvious choice of subject and an analysis of her work takes up a substantial portion of chapter 3. The poems receive a fresh and detailed critique and Andreadis points out that Philip's relationships with other women were becoming understood as liminal, especially when reference was made to Sappho. Indeed the discussion about the reception and rewriting of Sappho via Ovid, and in a male tradition, which forms the subject of the second chapter is perhaps the most interesting section of the book. Linguistic evidence is provided and the evolution of terms such as tribade and fricatrice is examined for their ideological freight. Stephen Orgel in his essay 'Jonson and the Amazons' cites Jonson's usage of the adjective for female homosexuality as the earliest recorded. In Epicoene, Jonson sends Venus to invent new sports with the Graces calling them 'thy tribade trio'. Although the author traces how myths about tribadism became enshrined in drama, romance and poetry she does not include this reference. She does, however, cast new light on the classical influences on English literature at this time through her analysis of the way Ovid's fictional rewriting of Sappho's sexual activities in the Heroïdes gained credibility and authority. The same-sex erotics available to those who could read Latin were gradually suppressed in vernacular literature considered suitable reading for the 'proper lady'. Katherine Philips set a precedent in the homosocial environment of her time, but by the mid-eighteenth century explicitly transgressive discourse had been split from a charged but shadowy language that would lead to the development of a language of female romantic friendship based on virtue and chastity. Andreadis's history of ideas also embraces other late seventeenth-century writers: Anne Killigrew, Anne Finch, and Jane Barker, thus providing an interesting background for students of Jane Austen. The book adds to studies of Early Modern subjectivity from a new perspective which deserved expansion in an introductory chapter. As it stands, there is a very short preface and some statement of theoretical intent in Chapter I where Andreadis positions herself among other scholars who have either evaded (Faderman) or promoted (Castle) a recovery of same-sex literary perspective. For anyone interested in pre-Romantic women's writing and in the way a male culture has shaped its production and reception, this book is a welcome addition to the critical work accumulating on previously marginalized authors. There are a few diverting illustrations and an excellent bibliography. Dosia Reichardt English James Cook University Copyright © 2005 the author