The Cambridge Companion to Sappho (Cambridge Companions to Literature)

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. FM Contents Plates Contributors Abbreviations Introduction 1. Contexts Sappho’s Lives Sappho’s Lesbos Sappho and Sexuality Sappho and Epic Sappho and Alcaeus Sappho and Archaic Greek Song Culture 2. Poetics Sappho and Genre Performing Sappho Sappho’s Metres and Music Sappho’s Dialect Sappho’s Poetic Language Sappho’s Personal Poetry Sappho’s Lyric Sensibility Myth in Sappho The Gods in Sappho 3. Transmission The Alexandrian Edition of Sappho Sappho on the Papyri Editions of Sappho since the Renaissance 4. Receptions Sappho in Fifth- and Fourth-Century Greek Literature Sappho and Hellenistic Poetry Sappho at Rome Sappho in Imperial Greek Literature Sappho at Byzantium Early Modern Sapphos in France and England Early Modern and Modern German, Italian, and Spanish Sapphos Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Sapphos in France, England, and the United States Sappho and Modern Greece Sappho in the Twentieth Century and Beyond Anglophone Receptions Sappho in Australia and New Zealand Sappho in Latin America Sappho in Hebrew Literature Sappho in India Sappho in China and Japan Bibliography General Index Index to the Reception of Sappho Plates "No ancient poet has a wider following today than Sappho; her status as the most famous woman poet from Greco-Roman antiquity has, down the centuries, ensured a continuing fascination with her work. The ancient edition of her poems, which filled probably nine books and thus over 10,000 lines, did not survive; but the fragments of those poems which have been preserved, both as quotations in authors whose works did outlast antiquity, and on ancient papyrus manuscripts recovered from the sands of Egypt, offer many glimpses of her poetic brilliance"-- Provided by publisher