Sappho SCHOLARSHIP

Question 1

Because we know so little about Sappho she becomes…

Answer 1

‘This kind of empty space where you can paint in whatever it is that you want’ Reynolds

Question 2

Carson on Poem 31 ‘He is as blessed as a god’
Theme - Desire

Answer 2

‘’Were she to change places with the man who listens closely, it seems likely she would be entirely destroyed’’ Carson

Question 3

Adler on Poem 94 - ‘Honestly I want to die’
Themes - love and desire

Answer 3

“the poem ends as it began: with loss.” Adler

Question 4

Snyder on same sex relationships (with reference to ‘Come, Queen Hera’)

Answer 4

‘’The act of sex is not always mentioned but alluded to, perhaps indicating that this is a space in which desire can flourish.” Snyder (the space being a temple and the women perhaps being priestesses) remeber you can use the first part of this quote to support ideas around floral imagery for sex etc.

Question 5

Gupta

Answer 5

‘the resistance to marriage in fragment 44a lends to the theory that Sappho herself did not favour marriage’.

Question 6

Klinck

Answer 6

“Each generation is seen to create its own Sappho on the basis of its own needs and interests”

Question 7

Klinck (Maximus of Tyre)

Answer 7

“Sappho had intimate relations? Maximus of Tyre (Orationes 18.9,Hobein 232)) says that Sappho loved beautiful young women in the same way Socrates loved beautiful young men”

Consider ideas of pederasty in general in Greece

Question 8

Klinck on the personal nature of Sappho’s poetry

Answer 8

“Sappho’s interest is personal. She focuses on Helen’s decision to run off with her lover - whereas Alcaeus’s poem on Helen emphasises the slaughter of battle.”

Question 9

Hallett

Answer 9

”she is taking the “sexual initiative” and behaving as only men are supposed to.”

Question 10

Hallett on Sappho’s role in public & social function

Answer 10

“Rather, I believe that she should be regarded primarily as a poet with an important social purpose and public function: that of instilling sensual awareness and sexual self-esteem”

Question 11

Kivilo on the performative legacy of Sappho’s poetry

Answer 11

“We have only two late sources to describe how Sappho’s poetry was performed in antiquity, by Plutarch and Gellius: both say that it was sung at the symposium after dinner.”

Question 12

Galen on Sappho’s reknown

Answer 12

“You have only to say the Poet and the Poetess, and everyone knows you mean Homer and Sappho.”