Abstract
Though the field of LGBT literary studies has expanded to a certain extent, the LGBT community is continuing to fight for their equal social rights. This thesis aims to address LGBT literature through an interdisciplinary approach, hoping to open up new research perspectives in limited amount of LGBT related texts. There are a lot of symbols in LGBT texts. Authors assign abundant meanings to these symbols, making them the media of resistance in texts when they face oppression from the society. In Dong Qizhang’s “Androgyny” and Qiu Miaojin’s “Notes of a Crocodile,” both authors use reptilian symbols, lizard and crocodile respectively, to signify homosexual people. If we relate the reptilian symbols in literary works to biological discourses, including biological perspectives in textual analysis, these discourses may provide LGBT literature in 1990s with the agency to resist gender frames. LGBT communities in the texts are described as unnatural deformed creatures. However, considering the theory of evolution mentioned in the texts, LGBT communities’ ability to break down gender norms is advantageous for evolution. Both Dong and Qiu use the biological theory of evolution and reptilian symbols to depict the course of forming gender identity and this is the strategy of gender politics shown in texts when they are oppressed by the society.