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.
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...
Textual Production
Anne Dacier
The future AD
issued a translation unconnected with the Delphin project and through a different publisher: Les Poésies d'Anacréon
et de Sapho
, traduites de grec en français.
Grosperrin, Jean-Philippe, and Christine Dousset-Seiden, editors. “Les époux Dacier: une bibliographie”. Littératures classiques: les époux Dacier, Honoré Champion, pp. 259-86.
262
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Anne Dacier
She did not adopt, however, her father's concept of Sappho. She says that she will defend Sappho's reputation against her detractors, and does so by a version of the great poet which is quite different...
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...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Christine de Pisan
This is another important work on the social position of women, which musters all the strategies of late-medieval rhetorical debate in discussing such topics as female education and the institution of marriage. It praises distinguished...
Textual Production
Catherine Carswell
Few of CC
's poems survive, but in 1916 she was regularly sending poetry to Lawrence
for critique. She was clearly choosing bleak material: his comments use the word stark three times in two sentences...
Textual Production
Anne Carson
AC
's translations from Greek manage to incorporate some of the quirkiness of her original texts and titles. She titled If Not, Winter. Fragments of Sappho, 2002, from a poetic scrap that leaves the...
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.
For AC
, eros is a three point circuit between lover, beloved and that which comes between them.
Carson, Anne. Eros The Bittersweet. Princeton University Press.
16
In Kafka's story this geometry can be charted in the relationship between the philosoper, the top...
Textual Production
Anne Carson
AC
's poetry collection Men in the Off Hours, 2000, variously inhabits the minds (and bodies) of Tolstoy
, Lazarus, Freud
, Catullus
, Sappho
and Emily Dickinson
, not to mention the French...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Anne Carson
The book opens with a sequence of poems, Stops, about love for parents, recognition of approaching death, the the frailty of trivial detail weighted with emotional implication: To my mother, / love / of...
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.
The Woman-Hater again features Lady Smatter. This time she drops nearly five times as many authors' names as in The Witlings; only one, Sappho
, is that of a woman.
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Mary Ann Browne
In 1840 MAB
published in three of the Dublin University Magazine's monthly issues. Her Sketches from the Antique—Second Series (in September) centres on women in antiquity. The Victor Virgin describes girl athletes racing; although...
