約翰‧克里蘭之《歡場女子回憶錄》(《芬妮‧希爾》)是一本由兩封虛構書信所構成的性小說(sexual fiction)。在書中，敘事者芬妮向受信女士透露其賣淫史。疊藏於此書信體小說乃芬妮的性秘密。此篇論文旨在以三種不同的(哲學的、社會歷史的及文本的)觀點來檢視芬妮的性秘密。
在第二章裡，笛卡兒、拉梅特利與《芬妮‧希爾》之間將建立起某種連結。笛卡兒相信非物質靈魂的存在及人類語言的獨特性，而在《機器人》中，拉梅特利將人視為一部由彈簧構成的機器，靈魂乃此機器之主要彈簧的一部分，同時，拉梅特利推測教導猿猴說話的可能性。此外，他在《機器人》中詳述想像(imagination)此一觀念。機器與彈簧此二種唯物意像亦出現在《回憶錄》裡，而如同拉梅特利，克里蘭於《回憶錄》中顯示出想像之重要性和想像與性之間的交互作用。
在第三章中，首先，我提供一份對啟蒙時期英國性意識學術式的重構，並證明《回憶錄》乃一啟蒙產物。之後，將檢視小說中性意識型態--性非/常態--的建構。在《回憶錄》中，克里藍將婚姻的、再造的異性戀性模式建構為性常態，而此性常態把小說中其他的性實踐排斥為性非常態。
在第四章，我嘗試將《回憶錄》視為一個成功激起讀者性慾的文學文本。焦點擺在小說的敘事技巧以及小說第一人稱敘事者的用法。《回憶錄》中充滿了對性器官的描述及性活動的敘述，這些描述/敘述持續不斷地引誘著讀者，然而小說亦關切其他生活面向之再現，它不是一個無時間/無地點的色情烏托邦(pornotopia)。就《回憶錄》的敘事者而言，文本中女性的"我"提供男性作者與讀者一個能夠滿足性欲望的文本/想像空間，因此，芬妮的性秘密實際上是男人的性幻想。
第五章重述前三章之要點，此外，亦指出此論文乃一掀開芬妮秘密的過程。

Composed of two fictional letters, John Cleland's
Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (commonly known as Fanny Hill) is a sexual fiction in which Fanny, the narrator, confides her history of prostitution to her addressee, Madam. Folded within this epistolary novel are Fanny's sexual secrets. This thesis aims to examine Fanny's sexual secrets from three different (philosophical, socio-historical, and textual) perspectives.
In chapter two, a certain link is made between Descartes, La Mettrie, and Fanny Hill. Descartes believes in the immaterial soul and the uniqueness of human speech, while in L'Homme machine La Mettrie sees human being as a machine made of springs in which the soul is one part of its mainspring, and he speculates on the possibility of teaching an ape to speak. Besides, La Mettrie elaborates on the notion of imagination in L'Homme machine. The materialist images of the machine and the spring also appear in the Memoirs, and, like La Mettrie, in the Memoirs Cleland shows the importance of imagination and the interplay between imagination and sexuality.
In chapter three, first, I offer an academic reconstruction of sexuality in the Enlightenment Britain and I demonstrate the Memoirs as an Enlightenment product. Then, I examine the novel's construction of the sexual ideology of sexual ab/normality. In the Memoirs, Cleland constructs marital, reproductive heterosexuality as the sexual normality, which excludes all the other sexual practices in the novel as sexually abnormal.
In chapter four I try to see the Memoirs as a successful sexually-arousing literary text. The focus is on its narrative techniques and the use of the first-person narrator. The Memoirs is filled with descriptions of sexual organs and narrations of sexual activities that keep seducing the reader, but it is also concerned with representation of other aspects of life. It is not a timeless/placeless pornotopia. In terms of the narrator, the textually female "I" offers a textual/ imaginary space where male author and reader can fulfill their sexual desires. Hence, Fanny's sexual secrets are in fact men's sexual fantasies.
Chapter five recapitulates the previous three chapters. Besides, it points out that this thesis is a process of unfolding Fanny's secrets.

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