SAPPHO SCHOLARS

Question 1

‘Sappho represents access…’

escape from boundaries

Answer 1

‘… to the woman’s voice and perhaps escape from the boundaries of masculinity.’
- Carson

Question 2

‘Sappho is interested not only…’

gods

Answer 2

‘… in the experience of love, but in how it is overseen by the gods. Her relationship with Aphrodite is a central theme in her poetry.’
- Swift

Question 3

‘Sappho reinvented and celebrates…’

Answer 3

‘… Homer, giving characters like Helen an active role.’
- DuBois

Question 4

‘One of the purposes…’

Answer 4

‘… of Sappho’s work is to sexually educate women.’
- Hallett

Question 5

For Sappho to have a…

Answer 5

… homoerotic stance wouldn’t have been shocking. Argued that Sappho’s poems were performed at female symposia.
- Hall

Question 6

‘Emphasis on bridal virginity…’

Answer 6

‘… simply as a form of masculine oppression.’
- Freeman

Question 7

‘Sappho depicts eros…’

Answer 7

‘… as a violent external force, and as a disease or weakness.’
- Cyrino

Question 8

‘One of the few texts which breaks…’

Answer 8

‘… the silence of women in antiquity… women become more than an object of man’s desire.’
- DuBois

Question 9

‘Love appears as an…’

Answer 9

‘… overwhelming force.’
- Hollis

Question 10

‘Sappho does not merely study…’

Answer 10

‘… the experience of love and loss in others but actively participates.’
- Poochigan

Question 11

‘Female homoeroticism…’

Answer 11

‘… remained through the ancient world a practice without a name.’
- Goldhill

Question 12

‘Sappho constructs erotic experience…’

male assumptions

Answer 12

‘… outside male assumptions about dominance and submission.’
- Green

Question 13

‘Sappho created a new…’

Answer 13

‘… feminine aesthetic away from the masculine spheres of war and violence.’
- Goldhill

Question 14

Sappho communicates the

Answer 14

female anxiety towards marriage, that did not operate on any romantic terms we see today
- Karinika

Question 15

Sappho may be writing

Answer 15

from a persona, not from personal experience
- Hallett

Question 16

Sappho emphasises the independence

Answer 16

of the female perspective and its power… these reversals tap into the widespread early epic motif of feminine unsuitability for war
- Kelly

Question 17

male assumptions about competition

Answer 17

and dominance and submission have determined the forms of erotic expression… Sappho does not picture love relations as dominance by one partner over another… desire is mutual
- Stahle

Question 18

Sappho represents access

Answer 18

to a woman’s voice
- Greene

Question 19

Sappho focuses on the

Answer 19

double-sided nature of love
- Carson

Question 20

loeb 16 - Anactoria has left Sappho to marry

Answer 20

Sappho likened to Menelaus
wistful
description of Anactoria indicates youth, marriage likely
- Brown

Question 21

loeb 110 - the sexual imagery

Answer 21

creates humour to mask the female anxieties surrounding marriage
- Yatromanolakis

Question 22

loeb 114 - Sappho saw maidenhood

Answer 22

as something that departs never to return again, but its loss is a social necessity.
- Snyder

Question 23

loeb 146 - links to past relationships

Answer 23

sweet things aren’t for her, some relationships don’t work out
hasn’t me the right bee or tasted the right kind of honey
- Carson

Question 24

nightingale

Answer 24

links to the myth of Philomela who was raped by her sister’s husband Tereus, then had her tongue removed and was turned into a nightingale
- Chandler