Books

Sappho
Encyclopedia of Hollywood Film Actors: From the Beginning to the Mid-1960s Vol 1
Stranger in the Family: How to Cope If Your Child Is Gay
Wrestling for Gay Guys: Overcoming Problems, Fears and Hang-ups
Fruit of Your Loins: Four Plays - "Flesh and Blood in Cincinnati", "Annunciation", "Minimum Wage", "Bruce Spru
Tranny Guide
The WayOut Tranny Guide
Just Take Your Frock Off: A Lesbian Life
How to Survive Your Own Gay Life: An Adult Guide to Love, Sex and Relationships
Rainbow Handbook - Hawaii: The Island's Ultimate Gay Guide
Centenary of the Famous 41: Sexuality and Social Control in Mexico, 1901 (New Directions in Latino American Cultures)
Lesbian and Gay Psychology: New Perspectives
Wonder Bread and Ecstasy: Life and Death of Joey Stefano
Gay Men and Women Who Enriched the World
Making It Big: Sex Stars, Porn Films and Me
The Wit and Wisdom of Quentin Crisp
Out on Fraternity Row: Personal Accounts of Being Gay in a College Fraternity
Lesbians Raising Sons
Too Much of a Good Thing....: Quotes You Can't Get Enough of
Growing Up Gay in a Dysfunctional Family: A Guide for Gay Men Reclaiming Their Lives
Shirts and Skin
Beginnings: Lesbians Talk About the First Time They Met Their Long-term Partner
The Gay Sex: A Manual for Men Who Love Men
Gay Old Girls
The Essential Guide to Lesbian and Gay Weddings

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Was Sappho a lesbian ?
the Lesbian lesbian
"there's so much beauty..."
A pure earthy pleasure
Timeless

Sappho: A New Translation
Sappho
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Similar Items:

The Love Songs of Sappho (Literary Classics)
If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho
The Complete Greek Tragedies: Sophocles I (The Complete Greek Tragedies, Vol 1)
The Symposium (Penguin Classics)
Long Journey Home: Revisioning the Myth of Demeter and Persephone for Our Time

ASIN: 0520223128

Book Description

These hundred poems and fragments constitute virtually all of Sappho that survives and effectively bring to life the woman whom the Greeks consider to be their greatest lyric poet. Mary Barnard's translations are lean, incisive, direct--the best ever published. She has rendered the beloved poet's verses, long the bane of translators, more authentically than anyone else in English.

Customer Reviews:

Was Sappho a lesbian ?.......2005-04-12

Sappho takes a special place among the poets of Antiquity. Plato already said that she was the tenth Muse.It's really refreshing to read her poems. They are very vivid and she needs only a few words to describe essential human feelings.

I'm not qualified to judge the translation but it strikes me that the poem known as 'The wedding of Hektor and Andromache'is left out (4 stars instead of 5).This poem is one of the most vivid descriptions in the poetry of Antiquity. It gives an almost journalistic account of the homecoming of Hektor and Andromache.

By many persons Sappho is considered as a lesbian writer. I don't have the answers but we should consider a few things.
To answer the question we should know her better, because too litle is left of her work to say anything with certainty.

Poems, though they reveal a lot of the poet, are seldom strictly autobiographical. In Antiquity no writer reveals his most inner feelings. We have to wait untill 'The Confessions' by St. Augustin in the 4th century to see that happen.

the Lesbian lesbian.......2004-07-20

Because Sappho was a Lesbian who wrote about lesbian love, her poetry was banned at times throughout the ages, and therefore to this day there are only surviving fragments of her work and almost no complete poems. But of the fragments there is more than enough to ensure her place as one of the great female poets of all time. She wrote mainly love poems about things like passion, jealousy, and hostility towards her enemies. This book includes all of her surviving verse in a very readable and enjoyable translation.

David Rehak
author of "Poems From My Bleeding Heart"

"there's so much beauty...".......2002-03-08

Rich Mullins once wrote "there's so much beauty around us for just two eyes to see." And so it is with the poetry of this ancient Greek lady Sappho. Without her extra eyes, I would be robbed of some sights I could not have found without her. For instance, in one of her poems, she writes:

"Awed by her splendor

Stars near the lovely
moon cover their own
bright faces
when she
is roundest and lights
earth with her silver"

Not only is there beauty. There is a straightforwardness and frankness to the poems of Sappho. It is a clear distillation of the poet's vision confronts the readers of these pages.

There is also wisdom and humor. As when she writes:

"Experience shows us

Wealth unchaperoned
by Virtue is never
an innocuous neighbor"

Mary Barnard is to be praised for these clear, unvarnished translations. Likewise, the introduction is very useful in dispelling so much of the myth that has sprung up around the legacy of this great poet. I recommend this book highly.

A pure earthy pleasure.......2000-08-24

Bernard's translation of Sappho is a translation of a poet who is down-to-earth, who pays attention to the detail.

Some of the fragments are so brief that you are reminded of haiku: "The nightengale's / The soft-spoken / announcer of / Spring's presence"

Other poems speak specifically of feminine concerns - the lost of the maiden-head, the color of ribbon that fits best in her daughter's yellow hair.

I read a great deal of poetry in translation. In other translations I have not found Sappho to my liking. This translation appears to me to be truer to the author's earthliness and less concerned with making Sappho fit into preconceptions. In short, I highly recommend this translation.

Timeless.......1999-11-17

Beutiful. Read it to someone you love.

The copy may seem spare at first but the power of Sappho's words more than fill the page. I was first introduced to this text by a dear friend. That is how you should share it. This translation is both complete and avoids overly politicizeing her life. Well worth the price.

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A Beautifully Constructed Book
Haunting and beautiful
Buy this book
Finding song in the spaces between
Brilliant

If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho
Sappho
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Sappho: A New Translation

ASIN: 0375724516
Release Date: 2003-08-12

Book Description

Of the nine books of lyrics the ancient Greek poet Sappho is said to have composed, only one poem has survived complete. The rest are fragments. In this miraculous new translation, acclaimed poet and classicist Anne Carson presents all of Sappho’s fragments, in Greek and in English, as if on the ragged scraps of papyrus that preserve them, inviting a thrill of discovery and conjecture that can be described only as electric—or, to use Sappho’s words, as “thin fire . . . racing under skin.” By combining the ancient mysteries of Sappho with the contemporary wizardry of one of our most fearless and original poets, If Not, Winter provides a tantalizing window onto the genius of a woman whose lyric power spans millennia.

Customer Reviews:

A Beautifully Constructed Book.......2007-04-20

Anne Carson approached the project of translating fragments of Sappho's work with as much care and respect as possible. The result is something truly intelligent & lovely. I recommend this book to anyone who has an appreciation for poetry, both modern and classic, and translation.

Haunting and beautiful.......2006-11-22

Sadly, much of Sappho's work is lost to the ages. Fortunately, Anne Carson has translated what survives in a wonderful, comprehensive collection. All of Sappho's extant works are here in a dual-language book - the original Greek on one page, Carson's translations on the other. Having read several translations (I do not read Greek), Carson's is my favorite - the images are immeadiate, the sense of urgency and romance clearly communicated in lyric prose. Some apparently are frustrated by the equal attention Carson gives to each fragment - remnants of poems (even a single word) are given their own page just as longer bits. I enjoyed this, wondering what has been lost, haunted by a voice over 2,000 years old, marveling at the beauty of what remains. If you, like me, are a lover of poetry, I highly recommend this collection above all other translations.

Buy this book.......2006-09-23

Some amount of criticism has been aimed at Carson for publishing such slight (in some cases, two words of a poem) examples of Sappho's poetry. I disagree. One is haunted by the fragments, which are almost painful to read because beautiful, compelling...and incomplete. To paraphrase Adrienne Rich, these are worth a look because even their alphabet is precious. If you want more, follow this with The Sappho Companion by Margaret Reynolds.

Finding song in the spaces between.......2005-01-16

I happened across this gem in Vancouver, and have been thoroughly delighted (if ashamed at how rusty my sight-reading of Ancient Greek has gotten). "If Not, Winter" is the best presentation of the Sapphic fragments that I've ever read. Careful attention is paid to presentation on the page, with brackets to differentiate between missing parchments and elided quotations. The arrangement is artistic and makes the fragments flow in as close to a lyric format as we're likely to get in English. Although the translator struggles with the classic tension between transparency of the translator through meaning/intent or through presentation exactly as written, I think she strikes a poetically ept balance between them, and gives you the Greek on facing pages in as close to an original representation as possible. It warms my little Classicist heart. Her notation is more complex than the presentation in most Ancient Greek texts, and that took a little getting used to, but the added detail was worthwhile content once I became accustomed to it. Sappho is my favorite lyric poet, and the shining and lucid presentation of her work her only strengthens my opinion of her. I'll be sure to search out Professor Carson's other translations now too.

Brilliant.......2003-03-19

This work is a treasure, I don't know how we can thank Pof. Carson enough. This is a complete collection of all we have left of the greatest poetess of the ancient age. They are all in fragments and the way Prof. Carson has set them out for us they haunt. The title itself says it all, a fragment, what comes before or after may be lost forever: "If not, winter", but even that small snippet strikes. Over two thousand years and Sappho still touches us.

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White Starlight
From the Publisher and Reviewers-----
.........................................
Another one of the "idols of our age"
Inspiring philosophical meditation

Art & Lies
Jeanette Winterson
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0679441816
Release Date: 1995-03-14

Book Description

One of the most audacious and provocative writers on either side of the Atlantic now gives readers a dazzling, arousing, and wise improvisation on art, Eros, language, and identity. "A series of intense, artful musings that are exhilarating and visionary. . . . Unsettling yet strangely satisfying."--Newsday.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Customer Reviews:

White Starlight.......2005-12-11

If you commit to it, it is one of the most amazing pieces of writing you will ever read. Many a delicious quotable niblet!

From the Publisher and Reviewers-----.......2004-11-11

Art and Lies: A Piece for Three Voices and a Bawd, American Ed.

FROM THE PUBLISHER
The novel brings together three apparently disparate figures on a single day in a single place - a high-speed train hurtling through the present or near-future (though the book itself ranges freely over the centuries). Handel is an ex-priest turned surgeon, a man whose humanity has been sacrificed to intellect. Picasso, a young woman cast out by the family that drove her to madness, is comforted only by her painting. And Sappho is the famed lesbian poet of antiquity, as alive as her immortal verse. Each is at once beguilingly symbolic and painfully real, alienated from a brutal technological world and united by Winterson's narrative, which directs them together towards a single end of satisfying inevitability. A story of lust, the unloved and loss, Art & Lies is also a jeremiad upholding the virtues of culture against the cold numbness of modern life. Erudite, impassioned, philosophical and, above all, daring, Winterson enfolds her characters in the ageless beauty of art - with a depth of feeling every bit as dazzling as her rich prose and fierce intellect.

FROM THE CRITICS
Publisher's Weekly
Set on a train traveling through a dystopian future England, Winterson's latest novel is a patchwork meditation on identity and artistry.
_______________________________________

To read Jeanette Winterson's 'Art & Lies' can and should be compared to the process of eating a glazed cream éclair. It is rich, it is melancholically sweet, it is pleasurable. Conjuring, her work strikes the reader with its clarity, its lucidity, its beauty. A delicious delirium. While the plot remains in the background, the nudity of confessional tone and stylistic voice lulls you to sleep only to slap you awake in the following paragraph. The price of each paragraph is a petal, as Emily Dickinson once wrote. A remarkable poetic novel, these words should keep you up nights and days in daze.

................................................2004-03-23

Art and Lies is in my humble opinion the best work of fiction (or is it?) I have ever read. It's dense, profoundly intertextual, and at times absolutely poetic. Please don't be fooled by Publius' obviously misguided review (for example, the comparison between Sophokles and Sappho is flawed from the start, and one might consider reading a bit about the historical reception of Sappho's work before making such bold statements); if Winterson will enter literary history as a footnote to a footnote, it will be one that disrupts the entire textual frame itself.

Another one of the "idols of our age".......2004-02-14

Jeanette Winterson is one of those IMPORTANT writers who are presented as the future of English literature. Note that I said important, not good. Winterson started off as a bad writer, and has become steadily more unreadable ever since. As an Amazon reviewer said about another of her novels, "Jeanette Winterson is not as smart as she thinks she is." She is a perfect example of the arrogant modern artist whose only goal seems to be to confuse and frustrate the reader with wretched prose, which at least helps to disguise the mediocrity of her insights into human nature. Unfortunately, her followers seem to treat every one of her turgid, unreadable books as gospel. I've read three- "The Passion," "Written on the Body," and this one -and each one has left me repulsed and derisive in equal parts. AS you might expect, all this praise by the lit-crit crowd has gone to Winterson's head, and she has presented herself as some sort of literary genius in interviews and elsewhere (we all should remember that true geniuses rarely describe themselves as such; their talent is self-evident as to warrant no bragging). But if we take her foolish pretensions to greatness as fact, then I must ask: what is wrong with us? Is Jeanette Winterson the best we as a culture can do? If so, then may God help us all.

A word on Sappho, who is one of this book's main characters. While not enough of Sappho's poetry has survived the ages to properly judge her talent, it is unfortunate that a decent Greek poetess such as her has been turned into one of the Anointed for the modern feminist movement, typified by Winterson and others. Throughout this book, Winterson seems completely unaware that the reason why most of Sappho's poetry does not survive is because of the cultural disaster of the Dark Ages, not some ridiculous male conspiracy to pervert and destroy her poems. We possess 7 plays out of the 300+ that Sophocles wrote, and those by complete accident: do you really think the "patriarchs" would have destroyed Sappho's work while forgetting to preserve their own gender's great authors? Now, I do understand that many of Sappho's early modern interpreters attempted to rewrite her poetry to make it more acceptable to them, which is regrettable but not surprising. However, rewriting Sappho to turn her into a feminist icon is just as bad, if not worse. I will grant Winterson one thing, though- no matter who rewrites it, Sappho's poetry will be read and appreciated long after Jeanette Winterson becomes no more than a footnote to a footnote in the history of literature.

In conclusion, "Art & Lies" is not good literature, but second-rate fiction and politics disguised as it, and should be strenously avoided by anyone wishing for profundity in their reading choices. A real author once wrote: "Beauty is truth, truth beauty - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." Winterson's books are neither beautiful nor true.

Inspiring philosophical meditation.......2003-12-09

"There's no such thing as autobiography, there's only art and lies," Winterson reports in this philosophical narrative which intertwines three lives. The surgeon Handel is running away from the mistake he made on the operating table. Self-named Picasso is a painter whose life has been constricted and nearly destroyed by her family, until her current escape. Sappho has wandered the ages following her poetry and reflecting on her loves and on how the world omits parts of her life. These stories, along with a fourth that is about a prostitute looking for her lover, cohere in Winterson's sparkling language and form a mosaic that explores art and love, living and sexuality, identity and consequences. "Art & Lies" defies the structure of storytelling and instead vividly illustrates the human condition. I didn't feel that the ending brought the narrative to any sort of completion, but overall I found the book inspiring on several levels.

The Laughter of Aphrodite: A Novel about Sappho of Lesbos

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anatomy of a mid-life crisis
Extraordinary approach to a fascinating character and time.

The Laughter of Aphrodite: A Novel about Sappho of Lesbos
Peter Green
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Similar Items:

The Love Songs of Sappho (Literary Classics)
Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age (Hellenistic Culture and Society)
Sappho's Leap: A Novel
Alexander of Macedon 356-323 B.C.: A Historical Biography

ASIN: 0520203402

Book Description

Best-selling classicist Peter Green recreates the life and times of the Greek lyric poet Sappho in this beautifully conceived, sharply detailed work of historical imagination. We meet Sappho at the age of fifty, when she is shaken by her fatal and final love affair with Phaon. She narrates her own story from the vantage point of self-questioning middle age, and her candid meditations make intimate, engrossing reading.
Only fragments of Sappho's poetry survive. In imagining Sappho's life Green found his task "rather like that of an archaeologist reassembling some amphora from hundreds of shards--of which more than half are missing." Yet, in his synthesis of historical evidence and ebullient invention, Green produces a seamless, moving, and persuasive portrait. He recreates Sappho's life by interweaving her surviving poetry into the narrative, not as quotations, but as her own imagined speeches and thoughts.
Sappho's life spanned one of the most exciting periods in Greek history. Green's novel, full of details about daily life on ancient Lesbos, draws the reader into the political and social climate of her world: the civil strife accompanying the transition from aristocracy to mercantilism, the household relations between slave and aristocrat, the details of sea travel in the Aegean. Green wrote the novel while living on Lesbos, and his graceful rendering of the landscape, the rhythms of the seasons, and the varied flora of Sappho's island pervades the narrative.
Sappho's poetry reveals a direct, spontaneous woman who eschewed artifice and embellishment. Green's extraordinary talent captures those qualities and brings this woman of unflinching honesty very much to life.

Customer Reviews:

anatomy of a mid-life crisis.......2001-05-17

Peter Green has created an insightful portrait of Sappho and the world in which she lived. This first person narrative is written with abundant poetic imagery -- great for giving you the feeling that Sappho is really the author, but not so great for following the storyline. Written by a reminiscing middle-aged Sappho, the plot continually shifts time frames, making it hard to keep up with what's going on. Like fragments of Sappho's poetry itself, the pieces *do* eventually come together, but only after many, many pages of frustrating reading.

One caveat: One of the back cover reviewers describes this as "an explicitly erotic modern novel," and maybe that was true when it was originally published in 1965. What sex there is is far from graphic, although it is sensual. ... .

Extraordinary approach to a fascinating character and time........1998-01-30

I've been touched by this powerful novel. What amaze me most is the way Sappho's character is revealed in all her plain and complex humanity. Is not a Sappho's personal account only . Besides the novel recreates its world with such authority and ease that makes a real pleasure to read it.

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Sappho's Oddessey of religion and sexuality
Very nice Historical Fiction
Not bad, but not wonderful
The Tenth Muse
Sappho and sex.... and magic??

Sappho's Leap: A Novel
Erica Jong
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Fear of Fifty

ASIN: 039332561X

Book Description

"Sappho's Leap delights."—USA Today

Sappho's Leap is a journey back 2,600 years to inhabit the mind of the greatest love poet the world has ever known. At the age of fourteen, Sappho is seduced by the beautiful poet Alcaeus, plots with him to overthrow the dictator of their island, and is caught and married off to a repellent older man in hopes that matrimony will keep her out of trouble. Instead, it starts her off on a series of amorous adventures with both men and women, taking her from Delphi to Egypt, and even to the Land of the Amazons and the shadowy realm of Hades.

Erica Jong—always our keenest-eyed chronicler of the wonders and vagaries of sex and love—has found the perfect subject for a witty and sensuous tale of a passionate woman ahead of her time. A generation of readers who have been moved to laughter and recognition by Jong's heroines will be enchanted anew by her re-creation of the immortal poet.

Customer Reviews:

Sappho's Oddessey of religion and sexuality.......2006-06-22

This book reminded me of when I took a mythology clas back in high school. but in this book, all the gods and goddesses really came alive! Erica Jong's sense of religion is astoudning. I found myself wanting to worship Aphrodite! Also the sexuality in his book is sensual, dreamy and it removes all "sin" from bisexuality. I was not previously aware that Pagans were free to be bisexual. After reading Sappho's encounters with members of both sexes, I started to realize the bisexuality in myself, and can no longer deny it.
Read this book to have fun and open your mind!

Very nice Historical Fiction.......2006-05-02

Saffo. As you have never seen her before. As a woman, a wise and a passionate soul. We have so little on Saffo that the Historical parts are more on the backbround of the historic age where she lived than on herself. A true history about her with the little things we have would not be possible. But the fiction is really very nice and this is one of my favourite books. I do reccomend this book to who likes this genre. Buy it.

Not bad, but not wonderful.......2006-03-03

I enjoyed reading this book, but I've definitely read better ones. The books tells the story of Sappho, the Greek poet/songstress of Lesbos. Yep, the one that inspired the word 'lesbian.' It's a biography of her life, so this is historical fiction, and it's kind of like an epic poem turned into a novel. Sometimes it came off too...intellectual? and not enough heartfelt. Like, I'd begin feeling like I was reading nonfiction instead of fiction. Other than that, it's a simple story with love, adventure, and magic, and it kept me suitably entertained, but not enthralled by any means. Go read it if you like Greek history and myth, otherwise I wouldn't recommend it.

The Tenth Muse.......2005-07-16

Many people have criticized this book of having too much sex. I have to disagree. The book deals with many subjects--love, friendship, motherhood, family...and yes, sex. Yet you have to understand this, since Sappho was a poet that dealt with, above all, erotic love. However, not all 291 pages of this novel concentrate on this subject. The reader will be transported to a whole different world, 2600 years ago, and travel to a place long ago forgotten. Along the way you will encounter people and creatures mentioned only in legends--amazons, minotaurs, sirens--and learn their way of living and the mythology associated with each. Erica Jong does a beautiful job of bringing Sappho to life, considering how little information remains of the woman Plato named "the tenth muse".

Sappho and sex.... and magic??.......2005-01-28

I have very mixed feelings about this book and can't say I enjoyed it all that much. I love the story of Sappho, what little is known of it, and so I picked up this book expecting to see a historical fiction novel cut with realism, research, and certainly the unavoidable necessary lewdness of the celebrity of Lesbos. But monsters? Centaurs? I mean, the story of Sappho's life is not the story of The Odyssey and for the life of me I don't understand why author Erica Jong decided to give her readers a combination of Greek heroine and Clash of the Titans.

Once I was able to get past the fantasy elements, I realized that I was not being pulled into the story on its own merits. There wasn't enough emotional dimension -- for all her travels, we're shown pretty landscapes and scary oceans but we don't see enough of a real character. I read Sappho's poems in college and the talented mind behind those words is NOT present in this book.

I'm not saying the book is without its good points. Jong has certainly done a lot of research and her enthusiasm is many times contagious. But I found the whole bit a little odd... like picking up a book about Cleopatra and seeing her encounter dragons, unicorns, and the goddess Isis. If Jong had written about Ariadne, this all might have worked. The blend of fantasy just didn't add up to a palatable meal for me.

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The Best Manual Of the Greek Lyric

Sappho and the Greek Lyric Poets
Willis Barnstone
Manufacturer: Pantheon
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Anthologies | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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Book Description

Willis Barnstone has augmented his widely used anthology of the Greek lyric poets with eleven newly attributed Sappho poems, making this the most complete offering of Sappho in English. Two new sections -- "Sources and Notes" and "Sappho: Her Life and Poems" -- provide the student with the classical sources and an appraisal of this greatest of Western women poets.

Barnstone's lucid, elegant translations include a representative sampling of all the significant Greek lyric poets, from Archilochus, in the seventh century B.C., through Pindar ("prince of choral poets") and the other great singers of the classical age, down to the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine periods. William McCulloh's introduction illuminates the forms and development of the Greek lyric. Barnstone introduces each poet with a brief biographical and literary sketch. The critical apparatus includes a glossary, index, bibliography, and concordance.

Willis Barnstone is professor of Spanish and comparative literature at Indiana University. He is co-editor of A Book of Women Poets from Antiquity to Now, and has translated poetry of Mao Zedong, Antonio Machado, and St. John of the Cross.

Customer Reviews:

The Best Manual Of the Greek Lyric.......1999-05-05

As a student of Greek Lyric poetry, I have spent many an hour in the library pouring over varying translations of many greek lyric poets. This book is by far the most complete, true-to-original book around; it has nearly all earth's remaining greek lyric from the Lyric Age, and, fankly, Barnstone's poems outstrip others in naked beauty. Those who are looking for Sappho--Each translator has thier strong poems and their weak ones, Barnstone, however, is strongest overall. His version of "To Anaktoria" is my favorite of all Sappho in translation.

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Aglaia
Charles Segal
Manufacturer: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Greek & Roman | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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Greek | Classics | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0847686175

Book Description

In this landmark collection of essays, renowned classicist Charles Segal offers detailed analyses of major texts from archaic and early classical Greek poetry; in particular, works of Alcman, Mimnermus, Sappho, Pindar, Bacchylides, and Corinna. Segal provides close readings of the texts, and then studies the literary form and language of early Greek lyric, the poets' conception of their aims and their art, the use of mythical paradigms, and the relation of the poems to their social context. A recurrent theme is the recognition of the fragility and brevity of mortal happiness and the consciousness of how the immortality conferred by poetry resists the ever-threatening presence of death and oblivion, fixing in permanent form the passing moments of joy and beauty. This is an essential book for students and scholars of ancient Greek poetry.

Sappho in Early Modern England: Female Same-Sex Literary Erotics, 1550-1714 (The Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society)

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Sappho in Early Modern England: Female Same-Sex Literary Erotics, 1550-1714 (The Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society)
Harriette Andreadis
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0226020096

Book Description

In Sappho in Early Modern England, Harriette Andreadis examines public and private expressions of female same-sex sexuality in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. Before the language of modern sexual identities developed, a variety of discourses in both literary and extraliterary texts began to form a lexicon of female intimacy. Looking at accounts of non-normative female sexualities in travel narratives, anatomies, and even marital advice books, Andreadis outlines the vernacular through which a female same-sex erotics first entered verbal consciousness. She finds that "respectable" women of the middle classes and aristocracy who did not wish to identify themselves as sexually transgressive developed new vocabularies to describe their desires; women that we might call bisexual or lesbian, referred to in their day as tribades, fricatrices, or "rubsters," emerged in erotic discourses that allowed them to acknowledge their sexuality and still evade disapproval.

The Love Songs of Sappho (Literary Classics)

Average customer rating:

Whoo!
Beautiful and well-researched.
Greatest lyric poet of Greece

The Love Songs of Sappho (Literary Classics)
Sappho , and Paul Roche
Manufacturer: Prometheus Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Love Poems | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Ancient, Classical & Medieval | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Greek | Classics | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Classics | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Sappho: A New Translation
If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho
Poems and Fragments
Sappho - Poems, A New Version
Greek Lyric: Sappho and Alcaeus (Loeb Classical Library No. 142)

ASIN: 157392251X

Customer Reviews:

Whoo!.......2007-04-12

I love saPpho! Stuffin cake in my mouth..Feelin the sexual feelings..A LeSbo historical figure writin Lesbian poetry and we get to see the historicity..Well Blow me dOwn as Popeye says..

Beautiful and well-researched........2003-02-01

The fragments themselves are quite beautiful, but I found the commentary much more interesting. Since so little is known about the subject, the translator provides notes along with each fragment that lets the reader know from where the fragment came. The commentary also includes citations from many writers of Greek lyric poetry. The result is not a work that gives one man's perspective of Sappho but a work that says: "here -- this is what scholars today say about Sappho and her native Greece." The book also includes an interesting essay by the translator, cute sketches, and a glossary of people and places.

Greatest lyric poet of Greece.......2000-04-05

Sappho was the greatest lyric poet of Greece, and any modern reader of her poetry can easily see why. Although she admittedly suffers in translation, one must learn to ignore the frustration caused by the occasional awkward translation. One must also try to ignore the fragmentary nature of her poems. There was once a definitive edition which consisted of nine books, but it was burned in hte Middle Ages because of the lesbian love poems. The poems we have now are just papyrus fragments or quotations. However, even in English, even with only a few extant pieces, Sappho's poetry is vibrant and beautiful.

Reading Sappho: Contemporary Approaches (Classics and Contemporary Thought, 2)

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Reading Sappho: Contemporary Approaches (Classics and Contemporary Thought, 2)

Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Ancient | History | Subjects | Books

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Love Poems | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Criticism | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Greek | Classics | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Qualifying Textbooks - Spring 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Re-Reading Sappho: Reception and Transmission (Classics and Contemporary Thought, 3)
The Sappho Companion
Sappho: A New Translation
Greek Lyric: Sappho and Alcaeus (Loeb Classical Library No. 142)
Sappho Is Burning

ASIN: 0520206010

Book Description

Reading Sappho considers Sappho's poetry as a powerful, influential voice in the Western cultural tradition. Essays are divided into four sections: "Language and Literary Context," "Homer and Oral Tradition", "Ritual and Social Context", and "Women's Erotics". Contributors focus on literary history, mythic traditions, cultural studies, performance studies, recent work in feminist theory, and more.
A legendary literary figure, Sappho has attracted readers, critics, and biographers ever since she composed poems on the island of Lesbos at the close of the seventh century B.C. Bringing together some of the best recent criticism on the subject, this volume, together with Re-Reading Sappho, represents the first anthology of Sappho scholarship, drawing attention to Sappho's importance as a poet and reflecting the diversity of critical approaches in classical and literary scholarship during the last several decades.

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