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.
Circular portrait from a fresco in ancient Pompeii, popularly identified as Sappho though it probably portrays a high-society Pompeian lady. She is clad in blue, green, and purple, with a gold net over her short, curly hair, and large gold hoop earrings. She holds a wax tablet and a stylus ready for writing. bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbNaples National Archaeological Museum.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Mary Ann Browne
Sappho at the Loom again uses the ancient poet as a way of writing about the balance, for a woman, of poetry with more conventional female attributes: 'Tis well to contemplate thee thus: / For...
Textual Features Brigid Brophy
There is a strong flavour of Kafka about this comic parable both of a family and of a state. The royal family of Evarchia (somewhere in contemporary Middle or Eastern Europe) has an authoritarian father...
Textual Features Angela Brazil
Girls in these books sew, roll bandages, dig for victory, arrange care for the children of munitions workers, and raise money in support of the war effort. For the School Colours is also notable for...
Textual Production Anne Bradstreet
His long, descriptive title begins: The Tenth Muse, Lately Sprung up in America; or, Severall Poems, Compiled with Great Variety of Wit and Learning, Full of Delight, before going to enumerate the major poems...
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...
Literary responses Susanna Blamire
The reviewer of this collection in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal unoriginally but flatteringly called SB the Cumbrian Sappho.
Kushigian, Nancy, and Stephen C. Behrendt, editors. Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period.
Literary responses Mary Matilda Betham
Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote To Matilda Betham from a Stranger (later published privately), wishing that she might be as impassioned as Sappho —but holier and happier.
Wordsworth, Jonathan. The Bright Work Grows: Women Writers of the Romantic Age. Woodstock Books.
202
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Mary Matilda Betham
Catharine Macaulay , she insists, was pleasing and delicate in her person, and a woman of great feeling and indisputable abilities, though the democratic spirit of her writings has made them fall into disrepute.
Feminist Companion Archive.
She...
Textual Features Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
EOB writes in terms of a women's tradition: for instance, she praises Barbauld for praising Elizabeth Rowe . She makes confident judgements and attributions (she is sure that Lady Pakington is the real author of...
Intertextuality and Influence Maria Barrell
The range of styles is wide: from sentiment to burlesque. Poems of sentiment include an epitaph on a woman who died of a broken heart. Others construct a narrative for Maria: she gently and...
Textual Production Natalie Clifford Barney
NCB , under the pseudonym Tryphê, published Cinq petits dialogues grecs, the first of which celebrates Sappho 's love for women.
Tryphe is a Greek word whose meanings include softness, luxuriousness, and wantonness.
Crane, Gregory, editor. Perseus Digital Library. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu.
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Causse, Michèle. Berthe ou un demi-siècle auprès de l’Amazone. Tierce.
248
Benstock, Shari. Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900-1940. University of Texas Press.
284
Performance of text Natalie Clifford Barney
NCB 's Equivoque, a play about Sappho , was privately performed in her garden.
Causse, Michèle. Berthe ou un demi-siècle auprès de l’Amazone. Tierce.
249
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
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 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.
249
Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. No Man’s Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century. Yale University Press.
2: 226
The text incorporates quotations from Sappho , together with footnotes in Greek and critical commentary.
Benstock, Shari. Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900-1940. University of Texas Press.
291

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