SAPPHO SCHOLARS Flashcards
‘Sappho represents access…’
escape from boundaries
‘… to the woman’s voice and perhaps escape from the boundaries of masculinity.’
- Carson
‘Sappho is interested not only…’
gods
‘… 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
‘Sappho reinvented and celebrates…’
‘… Homer, giving characters like Helen an active role.’
- DuBois
‘One of the purposes…’
‘… of Sappho’s work is to sexually educate women.’
- Hallett
For Sappho to have a…
… homoerotic stance wouldn’t have been shocking. Argued that Sappho’s poems were performed at female symposia.
- Hall
‘Emphasis on bridal virginity…’
‘… simply as a form of masculine oppression.’
- Freeman
‘Sappho depicts eros…’
‘… as a violent external force, and as a disease or weakness.’
- Cyrino
‘One of the few texts which breaks…’
‘… the silence of women in antiquity… women become more than an object of man’s desire.’
- DuBois
‘Love appears as an…’
‘… overwhelming force.’
- Hollis
‘Sappho does not merely study…’
‘… the experience of love and loss in others but actively participates.’
- Poochigan
‘Female homoeroticism…’
‘… remained through the ancient world a practice without a name.’
- Goldhill
‘Sappho constructs erotic experience…’
male assumptions
‘… outside male assumptions about dominance and submission.’
- Green
‘Sappho created a new…’
‘… feminine aesthetic away from the masculine spheres of war and violence.’
- Goldhill
Sappho communicates the
female anxiety towards marriage, that did not operate on any romantic terms we see today
- Karinika
Sappho may be writing
from a persona, not from personal experience
- Hallett
Sappho emphasises the independence
of the female perspective and its power… these reversals tap into the widespread early epic motif of feminine unsuitability for war
- Kelly
male assumptions about competition
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
Sappho represents access
to a woman’s voice
- Greene
Sappho focuses on the
double-sided nature of love
- Carson
loeb 16 - Anactoria has left Sappho to marry
Sappho likened to Menelaus
wistful
description of Anactoria indicates youth, marriage likely
- Brown
loeb 110 - the sexual imagery
creates humour to mask the female anxieties surrounding marriage
- Yatromanolakis
loeb 114 - Sappho saw maidenhood
as something that departs never to return again, but its loss is a social necessity.
- Snyder
loeb 146 - links to past relationships
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
nightingale
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
