Reading Sappho

Contemporary Approaches

Ellen Greene

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9780520201958
• eBook ISBN: 9780520918061
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Reading Sappho considers Sappho's poetry as a powerful, influential voice in the Western cultural tradition. Essays are divided into four sections: "Language and Literary Context, " "Homer and Oral Tradition", "Ritual and Social Context", and "Women's Erotics". Contributors focus on literary history, mythic traditions, cultural studies, performance studies, recent work in feminist theory, and more. A legendary literary figure, Sappho has attracted readers, critics, and biographers ever since she composed poems on the island of Lesbos at the close of the seventh century B.C. Bringing together some of the best recent criticism on the subject, this volume, together with Re-Reading Sappho, represents the first anthology of Sappho scholarship, drawing attention to Sappho's importance as a poet and reflecting the diversity of critical approaches in classical and literary scholarship during the last several decades.
Reading Sappho considers Sappho's poetry as a powerful, influential voice in the Western cultural tradition. Essays are divided into four sections: "Language and Literary Context, " "Homer and Oral Tradition", "Ritual and Social Context", and "Women

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS 1
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD
• INTRODUCTION
• PART I Language and Literary Context
• ONE Sappho’s Amatory Language
• TWO Critical Stereotypes and the Poetry of Sappho
• THREE Phaethon, Sappho’s Phaon, and the White Rock of Leukas: “Reading” the Symbols of Greek Lyric
• FOUR Eros and Incantation: Sappho and Oral Poetry
• PART II Homer and the Oral Tradition
• FIVE Sappho and Helen
• SIX Gardens of Nymphs: Public and Private in Sappho’s Lyrics
• PART III Ritual and Social Context
• SEVEN Sappho’s Group: An Initiation into Womanhood
• EIGHT Sappho and Her Social Context: Sense and Sensuality
• NINE Romantic Sensuality, Poetic Sense: A Response to Hallett on Sappho
• TEN Who Sang Sappho’s Songs?
• PART IV Women’s Erotics
• ELEVEN Woman and Language in Archaic Greece, or, Why is Sappho a Woman?
• TWELVE Sappho’s Gaze: Fantasies of a Goddess and Young Man
• THIRTEEN The Justice of Aphrodite in Sappho I
• FOURTEEN Apostrophe and Women’s Erotics in the Poetry of Sappho
• FIFTEEN Sappho and the Other Woman
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• CONTRIBUTORS
• INDEX