Sappho

by

Dimitrios Yatromanolakis

• LAST REVIEWED: 10 May 2017
• LAST MODIFIED: 26 June 2012
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0074

Introduction

The bibliography on Sappho is truly enormous and labyrinthine. She is the only ancient woman poet whose work and polyvalent figure have exerted lasting and deep influence on medieval, early modern, and modern European intellectual and sociocultural history. Her figure has further influenced modern Canadian, American, African, and Australian literature and gender ideologies. Sappho—a Greek melic poet who, in antiquity, was sometimes known simply as “the poetess,” just as Homer was known as “the poet” (Galen 4.771)—was born on Lesbos, (probably) in the late 7th century BCE. On the basis of later sources (the Parian Marble, Strabo, Athenaeus, Eusebius, the medieval Greek lexicon/encyclopedia entitled Suda), there is broad scholarly consensus that she composed many of her poems between c. 600 and 580 BCE. Naturally, there remains uncertainty as to the exact dates of her floruit, as there is uncertainty about the exact dates of the work and life of any Archaic poet (except for Pindar, whose life spans the Late Archaic and the Early Classical periods). Apart from numerous other poems, she composed epithalamia (wedding songs). Extremely little is known about her activities in Mytilene, probably the most important city of Lesbos. A late-2nd- or early-3rd-century Oxyrhynchus papyrus (P.Oxy. 1800 fr. 1) and the 10th-century lexicon Suda (Σ 107 Adler) provide accounts of her life (cf. P.Köln 5860, dated to the 2nd century CE): most of this late information belongs to what some scholars conventionally call “biographical tradition.” She was granted an unparalleled status as a poet and sociocultural figure in Greek and Roman Antiquity. There is no complete compilation of all the ancient testimonia for Sappho. New fragmentary poems of Sappho preserved on papyrus were discovered and published in 2004. Their importance is discussed in New Fragments and Ancient Transmission.

General Overviews

Bowra 1961 (his chapter on Sappho) is one of the older, influential scholarly overviews, taking a mainly biographical approach. Despite its specialized title, Snyder 1997 is a good introduction to Sappho, with discussion of some of the most substantial fragments. In contrast to other general introductory books, which sometimes include no scholarly notes with references to earlier research, Snyder 1997 provides bibliographical discussion and documentation in her notes and includes a brief section on aspects of the 20th-century reception of Sappho. Aloni’s introduction in Aloni 1997 is a more specialized and well-written overview. See also MacLachlan 1997 and the thematic overview in Tsomis 2001. Ferrari 2010 is a most recent philological overview, with extensive discussion of the fragments.

• Aloni, Antonio. 1997. Saffo: Frammenti. Florence: Giunti.

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  Very well written survey, with discussion of many fragments.

• Bowra, Cecil Maurice. 1961. Greek lyric poetry: From Alcman to Simonides. 2d rev. ed. Oxford: Clarendon.

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  With its largely biographical and historicist approach, still a useful and perceptive survey by one of the leading scholars of that time.

• Ferrari, Franco. 2010. Sappho’s gift: The poet and her community. Translated by B. Acosta-Hughes and L. Prauscello. Ann Arbor: Michigan Classical Press.

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  Up-to-date, specialized overview, with detailed hypothetical reconstructions of the context within which the fragments might be viewed. Originally published as Una mitra per Kleis: Saffo e il suo pubblico (Pisa, Italy: Giardini, 2007).

• MacLachlan, Bonnie C. 1997. Personal poetry: Alcaeus, Sappho, Ibycus, Anacreon, Corinna. In A companion to the Greek lyric poets. Edited by Douglas E. Gerber, 133–220. Leiden, The Netherlands, and New York: Brill.

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  Succinct overview.

• Snyder, Jane McIntosh. 1997. Lesbian desire in the lyrics of Sappho. New York: Columbia Univ. Press.

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  Interesting general overview.

• Tsomis, Georgios. 2001. Zusammenschau der frühgriechischen monodischen Melik (Alkaios, Sappho, Anakreon). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.

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  Detailed thematic overview.