Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Sappho
-
Standard Name: Sappho
Birth Name: Sappho
Used Form: Sapho
Sappho
, the female poet who stands at the head of the lyric tradition in Europe, has been a major figure of identification, of desire, of influence, of adulation, and of opprobrium in British women's writing, though little remains of her texts. All of her estimated 12,000 lines of verse has been lost except a handful of complete poems and many fragments, either quotations of her work by other writers, or scraps deciphered from papyri used to wrap mummies in ancient Egypt. This mutilated body of work amounts to somewhere around seven hundred intelligible lines.
The leading topics of these poems are love-relationships and women. The opening poem, A Pastoral, from the Song of Solomon, is erotic in tone. It ends: For Love's as strong as Death, and pow'rful...
Intertextuality and Influence
Eavan Boland
Here she retains her focus on history and on women's lives. The relation between the two is paradoxical. Mise Eire (meaning I am Ireland)
McEvoy, Anne. Conversation about Eavan Boland with Isobel Grundy.
opens: I won't go back to it.
Boland, Eavan. Outside History. Norton.
78-9
Yet in...
Intertextuality and Influence
Rosalind Coward
With essays under such titles as Ideal Homes, Kissing, Naughty but Nice: Food Pornography, and Men's Bodies, Female Desire interrogates the matter-of-fact details and events of everyday life, revealing the complex...
Intertextuality and Influence
E. B. C. Jones
The book positions itself in relation to cultural, social and emotional markers that are not those of a majority in later times. Helen and Felicia read Northanger Abbey aloud, and Helen admits it to be...
Intertextuality and Influence
Sally Purcell
On a Cenotaph quotes a phrase from Baudelaire
's poem Lesbos: the shocking juxtaposition of a dead body with adoration in le cadavre adoré di Sapho
. Though SP
supplied notes to some things...
Intertextuality and Influence
Anna Jane Vardill
Her Attic Chest poems have an erudite flavour. She replies to Anacreon
, writes A New Epistle from Sappho
to Phaon, and signs other poems Aulus Gellius
(author of the Latin Attic Nights)...
Intertextuality and Influence
Jane Barker
JB
writes to one male friend (my Adopted Brother) on his approaching marriage, not to congratulate but to dissuade.
Barker, Jane. Poetical Recreations. Benjamin Crayle.
This volume, through its title, invokes a whole tradition of women's poetry. Sappho
was the first to bear the honorific nickname of tenth muse, which was later freely bestowed on writing women (like Anna Maria van Schurman
Intertextuality and Influence
Michael Field
They were greatly influenced in their writing of this book by Henry Thornton Wharton
's recent Sappho: Memoir, Text, Selected Renderings, and a Literal Translation. Containing John Addington Symonds
' translation of Sappho
's...
Health
Dora Carrington
Carrington attempted to give herself a miscarriage by riding a horse violently, and when this did not work she became depressed to a nearly suicidal degree.
Gerzina, Gretchen. Carrington: A Life of Dora Carrington, 1893-1932. John Murray.
Mallock, W. H. The New Republic. Scribner and Welford.
prelims
W. H. Mallock
dedicated his roman à clef The New Republic; or, Culture, Faith, and Philosophy in an English Country House to her .
Mallock, W. H. Memoirs of Life and Literature. Chapman and Hall.
96
She is said to...
Family and Intimate relationships
Natalie Clifford Barney
At sixteen, NCB
fell in love with Eva Palmer
, a biscuit heiress whose family vacationed with hers in Bar Harbor, Maine. Eva introduced NCB
to Sappho
's poetry and instigated her lifelong appreciation for Greek culture.
Chalon, Jean. Portrait of a Seductress: The World of Natalie Barney. Translator Barko, Carol, Crown.
11-12
Benstock, Shari. Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900-1940. University of Texas Press.
277
Education
Anne Carson
AC
successfully defended her PhD dissertation on the poetry of Sappho
. Titled Odi et Amo Ergo Sum (I hate and love, therefore I am), it eventually became first book project, Eros the...
Education
Anne Carson
When she was in highschool AC
's brother, four years older, liked her to do his homework for him.