Sappho Scholarship

Question 1

Phil Freeman (On bridal virginity)

Answer 1

“It is tempting to see the emphasis on bridal virginity simply as a form of
masculine oppression against younger women, lest they dare to enjoy their own sexuality..”

Question 2

Ellen Greene (On each generation)

Answer 2

“Each generation invents its own Sappho.”

Question 3

Susan Gubar (On lesbian artists)

Answer 3

“Sappho epitomises all the loss of genius in literary history, especially all the lesbian artists, whose work has been destroyed, sanitised or heterosexualised.”

Question 4

Dolores O’Higgins (On the loss of Sappho’s voice)

Answer 4

“Sappho’s loss of voice in the context of a lyric tradition that is essentially
performative, threatens to silence her altogether.”
(Not only has 95% of Sappho’s work been lost, but there are elements of what we do have that we will never fully understand thanks to cultural differences that cannot be bridged)

Question 5

James Davidson (On Loeb 16)

Answer 5

”..it is worth reading again in
slow motion … just trying to write down your impressions of it, your sense of it, your understanding..”

Question 6

Jack Winkler (On Sappho’s double consciousness)

Answer 6

”..men define and exhibit their language and manners as THE culture and segregate women’s … as a subculture … women are in the position of knowing two cultures
where men only know one … Sappho’s consciousness therefore is necessarily a double consciousness.”

Question 7

Eva Stehle (On an alternative to cultural norms)

Answer 7

“Sappho can represent an alternative for women to the cultural norms.”

Question 8

Andromache Karanika (On female anxiety towards marriage)

Answer 8

“Sappho deeply communicates the female anxiety towards marriage, marriage that did not operate in any romantic terms that we see today..”