As with the previous post, this chapter is written by a prolific and deeply knowledgeable scholar on the era in question. One of the benefits of a survey like the Cambridge Companion that is both a high-level overview and focuses specifically on lesbian history is that it can be easier to see some of the large-scale patterns. If the 17th century was an era when female homoeroticism was becoming more visible in general, the 18th century was an era when knowledge about female homoeroticism was becoming more organized into motifs, tropes, and categories. In some ways, that categorization only serves to emphasize the diversity of experiences that fall generally into the concept of "female homoeroticism". I've started poking at the idea that one of the problems with trying to identify "lesbianism in history" is that we need to acknowledge that there were many different "lesbianisms", each with their own history and cyclicity. On some points, they intersected and overlapped, on others they could be distinctly different. The awkwardness we often experience in trying to develop a unified historical model of lesbianism stems, in part, from trying to embrace all those lesbianisms as a single whole. But even if you look at much more recent lesbian history -- say, from the mid-20th century onward -- the experiences, concepts, and communities that are, in theory, covered by that label have been diverse, distinct, and sometimes in philosophical conflict. I shall continue poking at this idea and will probably turn it into a podcast at some point.
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