Full Description
No ancient poet has a wider following today than Sappho; her status as the most famous woman poet from Greco-Roman antiquity, and as one of the most prominent lesbian voices in history, has ensured a continuing fascination with her work down the centuries. The Cambridge Companion to Sappho provides an up-to-date survey of this remarkable, inspiring, and mysterious Greek writer, whose poetic corpus has been significantly expanded in recent years thanks to the discovery of new papyrus sources. Containing an introduction, prologue and thirty-three chapters, the book examines Sappho's historical, social, and literary contexts, the nature of her poetic achievement, the transmission, loss, and rediscovery of her poetry, and the reception of that poetry in cultures far removed from ancient Greece, including Latin America, India, China, and Japan. All Greek is translated, making the volume accessible to everyone interested in one of the most significant creative artists of all time.
Contents
Introduction P. J. Finglass and Adrian Kelly; Part I. Contexts: 1. Sappho's lives Maarit Kivilo; 2. Sappho's Lesbos Rosalind Thomas; 3. Sappho and sexuality Melissa Mueller; 4. Sappho and epic Adrian Kelly; 5. Sappho and Alcaeus Wolfgang Rösler; 6. Sappho and archaic Greek song culture Deborah Steiner; Part II. Poetics: 7. Sappho and genre Leslie Kurke; 8. Performing Sappho Franco Ferrari; 9. Sappho's metres and music Luigi Battezzato; 10. Sappho's dialect Olga Tribulato; 11. Sappho's poetic language Vanessa Cazzato; 12. Sappho's personal poetry André Lardinois; 13. Sappho's lyric sensibility Alex Purves; 14. Myth in Sappho Ruth Scodel; 15. The gods in Sappho Laura Swift; Part III. Transmission: 16. The Alexandrian edition of Sappho Lucia Prauscello; 17. Sappho on the papyri P. J. Finglass; 18. Editions of Sappho since the Renaissance P. J. Finglass; Part IV. Receptions: 19. Sappho in fifth- and fourth-century Greek literature Lyndsay Coo; 20. Sappho and Hellenistic poetry Richard Hunter; 21. Sappho at Rome Llewelyn Morgan; 22. Sappho in imperial Greek literature Ewen Bowie; 23. Sappho at Byzantium Filippomaria Pontani; 24. Early modern Sapphos in France and England Stuart Gillespie; 25. Early modern and modern German, Italian, and Spanish Sapphos Cecilia Piantanida; 26. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Sapphos in France, England, and the United States Marguerite Johnson; 27. Sappho and modern Greece Dimitrios Kargiotis; 28. Sappho in the twentieth century and beyond: anglophone receptions Barbara Goff and Katherine Harloe; 29. Sappho in Australia and New Zealand Marguerite Johnson; 30. Sappho in Latin America Robert De Brose; 31. Sappho in Hebrew literature Adriana X. Jacobs; 32. Sappho in India Ruth Vanita; 33. Sappho in China and Japan Jingling Chen; List of works cited; Index of passages discussed; Index of subjects; Index of Greek.
