Victorian Sappho
eBook - PDF

Victorian Sappho

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Victorian Sappho

About this book

What is Sappho, except a name? Although the Greek archaic lyrics attributed to Sappho of Lesbos survive only in fragments, she has been invoked for many centuries as the original woman poet, singing at the origins of a Western lyric tradition. Victorian Sappho traces the emergence of this idealized feminine figure through reconstructions of the Sapphic fragments in late-nineteenth-century England. Yopie Prins argues that the Victorian period is a critical turning point in the history of Sappho's reception; what we now call "Sappho" is in many ways an artifact of Victorian poetics.


Prins reads the Sapphic fragments in Greek alongside various English translations and imitations, considering a wide range of Victorian poets--male and female, famous and forgotten--who signed their poetry in the name of Sappho. By "declining" the name in each chapter, the book presents a theoretical argument about the Sapphic signature, as well as a historical account of its implications in Victorian England. Prins explores the relations between classical philology and Victorian poetics, the tropes of lesbian writing, the aesthetics of meter, and nineteenth-century personifications of the "Poetess." as current scholarship on Sappho and her afterlife. Offering a history and theory of lyric as a gendered literary form, the book is an exciting and original contribution to Victorian studies, classical studies, comparative literature, and women's studies.

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Yes, you can access Victorian Sappho by Yopie Prins in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literatur & Literaturkritik in der Dichtkunst. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. Half-title Page
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright Page
  5. Dedication Page
  6. Contents
  7. List of Illustrations
  8. Acknowlmdgments
  9. Introduction: Declining a Name
  10. One: Sappho's Broken Tongue
  11. Two: Sappho Doubled: Michael Field
  12. Three: Swinburne's Sapphic Sublime
  13. Four: P.S. Sappho
  14. Conclusion: Epitaph
  15. Works Cited
  16. Index of Sapphic Fragments and Testimonia
  17. General Index