Bertha Harris self-consciously deploys images of medieval female saints in her 1976 novel Lover, prefacing many narrative episodes with their vitae Her novel's lesbian concerns resonate with the early medieval virgin martyrs, and cross-pollinating this seminal work with aspects of medieval hagiography reciprocally illuminates how each culture represents the highly politicized nexus of the female body, temporality, and erotics These concerns converge within the relic, an object that tightly knits together the erotic and the aesthetic realms Such objects can lead to radical relationality across time and participate in generating localized sites where female bodies can achieve possible utopias through aesthetic enshrinement

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1057%2Fpmed.2012.13.pdf

Queer relics: Martyrological time and the eroto-aesthetics of suffering in Bertha Harris’ Lover

This article argues that the 1976 novel (reprinted in 1993) Lover by Bertha Harris, though receiving little critical attention in the past, can be considered an exemplary novel within discussions of both postmodern fiction and lesbian (or queer) theory. The article analyzes in particular the novel's self-consciousness as manifested by characters who cross-dress and who are artists (including the writer of the novel we are reading). The article calls for Harris to be added to the group of writers such as Wittig, Anzaldua, Lorde, and Winterson, who are discussed within the context of a postmodern lesbian narrative.

Amanda C. Gable

Papers

Bertha Harris's Lover : Lesbian and Postmodern