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The State of Sappho Studies at the Millennium

Monday, March 2, 2020 - 07:00

This article winds up my topical group of articles related in some way to Sappho. Next week I plunge into a two-month series of books and articles focusing on the topic of friendship and how it relates to women's same-sex relationships.

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Katz, Marilyn A. 2000. "Sappho and Her Sisters: Women in Ancient Greece" in Signs vol. 25, no. 2 505-531.

I added this to the list on the basis of “Sappho” in the title, but there’s very little directly-relevant content. While this sort of “survey of the field” article is useful to mine for my to-read list, in general I’ve tried to avoid scheduling them as actual entries. In this case, I’d done the review before realizing it should have been in that category.

This is a publications survey essay, talking about recent (as of 2000) publications on the topic of women in classical antiquity. It starts by noting that a similar survey in 1976 found it possible to survey the entire topic in the form of a half-dozen or so publications, and that the current state of the field is much more satisfactory.

This much material focusing on classical women is especially remarkable, given the generally conservative state of the academic field of classical studies. A great deal of the expansion is due to scholars taking a women’s studies approach to Classics, reanalyzing existing material from new angles.

Within this general survey, there is a section specifically looking at “Sappho Studies”. Two collections are noted: Reading Sappho (critical studies) and Sappho’s Sweetbitter Songs (including explorations of Sappho’s work in relation to a world “female-centered by contrast with the male domain of ‘hierarchical, agonistic relations.’” Also noted is Jane Snyder’s edition and analysis of Sappho’s work from a thematic point of view, Lesbian Desire in the Lyrics of Sappho (see here for my summary).  Similarly Margaret Wiliamson’s Sappho’s Immortal Daughters reviews her poetic technique and contextualizes the poems with their social milieu. Also mentioned is Joan DeJean’s analysis of how sexism and homophobia affected interpretations of Sappho’s life (Fictions of Sappho, 1546-1937)

Another collection of studies is E. Greene’s Re-reading Sappho that looks at readings and interpretations of Sappho from the 17th century on. (I have this on my list but haven’t read it yet.) A more post-modern approach to interpreting and contextualizing Sappho is found in Sappho is Burning by Page DuBois.

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