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Sappho
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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.
Connections
| Connections Sort descending | Author name | Excerpt |
|---|---|---|
| Characters | Sydney Owenson Lady Morgan | In the society that Morgan depicts, the Irish Catholic gentry are mostly absent, scattered in European exile. The peasantry, dirt-poor but generous-hearted, include Tim O'Leary, schoolmaster of a hedge school, scholar and expert in Irish... |
| Cultural formation | Anne Damer | Soon after her husband's death, obscene libels (bearing a political subtext) began to appear against AD
. William Combe
led the way in a couplet satire, The First of April; or, The Triumphs of Folly... |
| Cultural formation | L. E. L. | There are indications, however, that a rather suspect class standing contributed along with somewhat bohemian behaviour to the difficulty she had about weathering scandal. Benjamin Disraeli
famously and snobbishly wrote of a party at the |
| death | Eva Gore-Booth | She and Esther Roper are buried in a single grave in a Hampstead churchyard: the grave is marked with a Celtic cross Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/. qtd. in Donoghue, Emma. “’How could I fear and hold thee by the hand?’: The Poetry of Eva Gore-Booth”. Sex, Nation, and Dissent in Irish Writing, edited by Éibhear Walshe and Éibhear Walshe, St Martin’s Press, 1997, pp. 16-42. 36 |
| death | Anna Wickham | Although AW
's suicide came with little warning, she showed, in an unfinished autobiography written more than ten years earlier, a portentous awareness of a tradition of suicide among women poets: There have been few... |
| 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. Carson, Anne. Nox. New Directions, 2010. 5.1 |
| Education | Tillie Olsen | At home the Lerner children learned Yiddish songs and made up silly plays. Reid, Panthea. Tillie Olsen: One Woman, Many Riddles. Rutgers University Press, 2010. 27 |
| Education | Alison Uttley | At Manchester, AU
lived in the women's residence, Ashburne House. Formative teachers in her life included Hilda Oakeley Oakeley, a Somerville College graduate and a close friend of Eleanor Rathbone
, had a great impact... |
| 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, 1979. 11-12 Benstock, Shari. Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900-1940. University of Texas Press, 1986. 277 |
| Fictionalization | Violet Fane | In 1877 Fane's Sincere Friend Mallock, W. H. The New Republic. Scribner and Welford, 1878. prelims Mallock, W. H. Memoirs of Life and Literature. Chapman and Hall, 1920. 96 |
| 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, 1989. 271-2 |
| Intertextuality and Influence | Natalie Clifford Barney | NCB
's treatment of Sappho
was influenced by Les chansons de Bilitis by French writer Pierre Louÿs
(1894), a fictional work which purported to be a translation (along with biography, bibliography, and scholarly notes) of... |
| Intertextuality and Influence | Emily Dickinson | Among our contemporary poets, Adrienne Rich
has offered this reading of ED
's life and works: Emily Dickinson—viewed by her bemused contemporary Thomas Higginson as partially cracked, by the twentieth century as fey or... |
| Intertextuality and Influence | Natalie Clifford Barney | Rewriting Ovid
, NCB
attributes Sappho
's death to her love for Timas, a young female disciple, instead of Phaon. Causse, Michèle. Berthe ou un demi-siècle auprès de l’Amazone. Tierce, 1980. 249 Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. No Man’s Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century. Yale University Press, 1988. 2: 226 Benstock, Shari. Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900-1940. University of Texas Press, 1986. 291 |
Timeline
Later 8th century BC: This time probably saw the genesis of Homer's...
Writing climate item
Later 8th century BC
This time probably saw the genesis of Homer's Iliad, though few dates are more hotly argued over, and the very existence of Homer as a person who created (traditional, formulaic, oral) epic poems...
1555: French poet Louise Labé (c. 1520-1566), a...
Writing climate item
1555
French poet Louise Labé
(c. 1520-1566), a salonnière in the city of Lyons, daughter and wife of rope-makers, published her Oeuvres at Lyons.
Ehrengardt, Thibault. “Louise Labé, Head Corner Stone”. Rare Book Hub, Oct. 2015.
1691: William Walsh published anonymously A Dialogue...
Writing climate item
1691
William Walsh
published anonymously A Dialogue Concerning Women, Being a Defence of the Sex, Written to Eugenia.
Walsh, William, d. 1708. A Dialogue Concerning Women. Printed for R. Bentley and J. Tonson, 1691.
32, 34
Johnson, Samuel. The Lives of the Poets. Editor Lonsdale, Roger, Clarendon Press, 2006, 4 vols.
2: 305n10
1764: German labouring-class poet Anna Luise Karsch...
Writing climate item
1764
German labouring-class poet Anna Luise Karsch
first reached print with four separate publications at Berlin, most importantly a collection, Auserlesene Gedichte (edited for publication by J. G. Sulzer
).
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
1886: Eva Hope's Queens of Literature of the Victorian...
Women writers item
1886
Eva Hope
's Queens of Literature of the Victorian Era singled out Mary Somerville
, Harriet Martineau
, Elizabeth Barrett Browning
, Charlotte Brontë
, George Eliot
, and Felicia Hemans
.
Hope, Eva. Queens of Literature of the Victorian Era. Walter Scott, 1886.
passim
1968: Peter Jay founded Anvil Press Poetry, which...
Writing climate item
1968
Peter Jay
founded Anvil Press Poetry
, which by the early twenty-first century was based in Greenwich in south-east London, and described itself as England's longest-standing independent poetry publisher.
Anvil Press Poetry. http://www.anvilpresspoetry.com/.
April 1972: Sappho began monthly publication in London...
Building item
April 1972
Sappho began monthly publication in London as one of the few magazines written for and about lesbians.
Doughan, David, and Denise Sanchez. Feminist Periodicals, 1855-1984. Harvester Press, 1987.
83
Noyce, John. The Directory of British Alternative Periodicals 1965-1974. Harvester Press, 1979.
264
November 1981: The lesbian magazineSappho ended publication...
Building item
November 1981
The lesbian magazine Sappho ended publication in London.
Doughan, David, and Denise Sanchez. Feminist Periodicals, 1855-1984. Harvester Press, 1987.
83
1992: The city of Leiden in the Netherlands initiated...
Writing climate item
1992
The city of Leiden in the Netherlands initiated its Tegen-Beeld
, or Wall Poems, by painting on a wall a poem by Marina Tsvetajeva
or Tsvetaeva: the design is important as well as the words.
The Wall Poems of Leiden. http://www.muurgedichten.nl/wallpoems.html.
April 2016: A bot, or Twitter account programmed to issue...
Writing climate item
April 2016
A bot, or Twitter
account programmed to issue a piece of writing divided into fragments of 140 characters or less, entitled Sappho
@sapphobot, was launched this month and became Twitter's most popular poetry bot (apart from...
Texts
Burn, Andrew R., and Sappho. “Foreword”. Lyrics in the Original Greek, translated by. Willis Barnstone and Willis Barnstone, New York University Press, 1965, p. vii - xiii.
Burn, Andrew R. et al. “Introduction”. Lyrics in the Original Greek, translated by. Willis Barnstone, New York University Press, 1965, p. xvii - xxxi.
Sappho, and Anacreon. Les Poésies d’Anacréon et de Sapho. Translator Dacier, Anne, D. Thierry and C. Barbin, 1681.
Sappho, and Andrew R. Burn. Lyrics in the Original Greek. Translator Barnstone, Willis, New York University Press, 1965.