The Cambridge Companion to Sappho

by P. J. Finglass (Editor), Adrian Kelly (Editor)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781108100175
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/29/2021
Series:	Cambridge Companions to Literature
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	25 MB
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About the Author

P. J. Finglass is Henry Overton Wills Professor of Greek and Head of the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Bristol, and Director of the Arts and Humanities Research Council South, West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership. He has published an introductory book Sophocles (2019) in the series Greece and Rome New Surveys in the Classics, as well as editions of Sophocles' Oedipus the King (2018), Ajax (2011), and Electra (2007), of Stesichorus (2014), and of Pindar's Pythian Eleven (2007) in the series Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries; has co-edited (with Adrian Kelly) Stesichorus in Context (2015) and (with Lyndsay Coo) Female Characters in Fragmentary Greek Tragedy (2020); and edits the journal Classical Quarterly, all with Cambridge University Press.
Adrian Kelly is Tutorial Fellow in Ancient Greek Language and Literature at Balliol College, Oxford, and Associate Professor & Clarendon University Lecturer in Classics in the Faculty of Literae Humaniores at the University of Oxford. He is the author of A Referential Commentary and Lexicon to Homer, Iliad VIII (2007) and Sophocles: Oedipus at Colonus (2009), and co-editor (with P. J. Finglass) of Stesichorus in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2015). He is completing a Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics commentary on Homer, Iliad 23, and co-editing (with Christopher Metcalf) Gods and Mortals in Early Greek and Near Eastern Mythology and (with Henry Spelman) Text and Intertext in Archaic and Classical Greece, all for Cambridge University Press.

Table of 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.

Editorial Reviews

‘Including a general index (in addition to the reception index) and a very useful bibliography, this volume will be indispensable for all who are interested in Sappho and her tradition and for those working on archaic Greek poetry in general … Highly recommended.’ P. Nieto, Choice Magazine

'Greater appreciation for Sappho’s poems, increasing acceptance of lesbianism, poetic modernism, second-wave feminism, and feminist scholarship all contribute to a new view of her as poet and musician, yielding new fictions, and new translations…' Eva Stehle, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

‘ a ‘friendly’ and reliable travel ‘Companion’, a well-finished and elegant publication, entirely worthy of the quality of the publisher and the series, as well as of the poet to whom it is dedicated.’ Camillo Neri, Gnomon (in Italian)

From the Publisher