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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 April 2021
For the early reception of Sappho, the most extensive and detailed study is Yatromanolakis 2007; pp. 287–361 focus on fifth-century and later writers. For Sappho’s reception in the three genres covered in this chapter, see Lidov 2002 (on Herodotus), H. Foley 1998, Pender 2007, 2011, Capra 2014: 69–87, 2019 (on Plato’s Phaedrus), Ceccarelli 2013: 244–57 (on comedy).
The principal echoes of Sappho in Hellenistic poetry, at least before the recent additions to the corpus, are recorded in the major commentaries to the poets. Acosta-Hughes 2010 is the fullest survey covering third-century poetry as a whole. For Sapphic influence on particular poets, cf. Rauk 1989 (Erinna), Skinner 1989 (Nossis).
Traill 2005 is an excellent introduction to the reshaping of Sappho by her posthumous tradition, comedy especially, and Kivilo 2010: 167–200 investigates the legends about her in more detail. Barchiesi 2009 sets Roman reception of Sappho in the context of the Latin afterlife of Greek lyric, while D. West 1995, 1998, 2002 are full of informed insights into Horace’s practice, including his debts to Sappho. Feeney 1993 offers an excellent overview of the challenge facing Horace in replicating Greek lyric. Woodman 2002 is a stimulating turn against the consensus regarding the relative importance of Alcaeus and Sappho in Horace’s poetry, offering many insights into Sappho’s status in Rome. Thorsen and Harrison 2019 is a collection of essays on the reception of Sappho in Rome tackling a range of Roman authors with up-to-date bibliography. Morgan 2010 discusses many of the issues broached here at greater length, discussing (metrically) sapphic poetry by Catullus, Horace, and Statius. This important metrical dimension of Roman Sappho, the character of the stanza bearing her name, is taken in interesting directions by Rossi 1998 ≈ 2009 and Becker 2010, who both consider Horace’s use of the caesura, something that he himself introduced in a strong form to Latin sapphics in Odes 1–3, but relaxed in the Carmen saeculare and Odes 4; Becker 2010 is particularly concerned with the interplay of metre and accent in the stanza. Cucchiarelli 1999, meanwhile, investigates how contemporary metrical theory influenced Roman use of the form.
The best guide to the imperial reception of Sappho’s poetry is the collection of testimonia and fragments in Campbell’s Loeb, with texts and translation of the authors who cite or refer to Sappho. Her reception in the imperial period is discussed by Brooten 1996: 29–36, and touched on by Most 1995 ≈ Greene 1996b: 11–35, Prins 1996, and P. Freeman 2016. For Plutarch’s use of Sappho, see E. Bowie 2008b: 150–1. For Sappho in Aelius Aristides, see E. Bowie 2008a: 10; in Athenaeus, De Kreij 2016; in Philostratus’ Paintings 2.1, Platt 2011: 1–7; and in his Apollonius, E. Bowie 2009: 58, 60–1.
While the issue of the circulation of Sappho’s poems in the Greek Middle Ages has been debated (e.g. Moravcsik 1964 = 1967: 408–13, Garzya 1971 = 1974 versus Pontani 2001, Reinsch 2006), no comprehensive study has been produced on the extent and the rationale of the continuing influence of classical poets in Byzantium (N. Wilson 1996 and Pontani 2015 rather discuss Byzantine scholarship on ancient authors). Several studies investigate single poets, from Homer to Hesiod to Callimachus (Browning 1992, Cardin and Pontani 2017, Pontani 2011), but lyric poets, mostly no longer available in Byzantium (the exceptions are Pindar and Hipponax, for which see Irigoin 1952, Kambylis 1991, Lauritzen 2010, Masson 1962), have received no special attention.
DeJean 1989a was seminal, and much of its early modern material is still useful, especially as regards France. Lipking 1988a is a suggestive and nuanced tour d’horizon covering, despite its title, much of the ground to 1711; Lipking 1988b contains a reworked version.
Rüdiger 1933, 1934 are still relevant on the German context, the former focusing on the literary reception, the latter on translations. DeJean 1989a, 1989b deal extensively with the treatment of Sappho’s biography in German philology of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, while Parker 1993 ≈ Greene 1996b: 146–83 explores the interpretation of Sappho as schoolmistress in modern scholarship up to the late twentieth century, including an analysis of German and Italian studies. The essays in Chemello 2012a, 2015 discuss key aspects of the Italian reception of Sappho from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century in literature, music, and visual arts. For the Spanish literary reception in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see Barrero Pérez 2004, 2005, 2007.
The topic of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Sapphos is increasingly covered by scholars working in a variety of fields, including classical reception, comparative literature, women’s studies, and cultural history. Some examples of the broad discipline coverages include McCormick 1997, Andreadis 2001, and Beynon and Gonda 2010.
For the relationship of Elytis, Varnalis, and Dionysios Solomos with antiquity, see Jakob 2000, Zarogiannis 1988, Veloudis 1989, Tomadakis 1943. The fundamental study on Palamas is Dimaras 1947. For the role of biblical and liturgical language in Palamas, Sikelianos, and Elytis, see Hirst 2004. For the role of ancient myth in Modern Greek poetry, see Mackridge 1996. Women’s literacy and role in nineteenth-century Greek culture is discussed by Rizaki 2007, the origins and development of the Greek feminist movement by Varika 2011; Avdela and Psarra 1985 provides an anthology of feminist writings from the first decades of the twentieth century. Yatromanolakis 2003 discusses Sappho in Solomos and Stratis Myrivilis, as well as Dimitrios Paparrigopoulos, Aristotelis Valaoritis, Dimitrios Vernardakis, Alexandros Rizos Rangavis, Angelos Sikelianos, and Zoi Karelli – all major literary figures of Modern Greece.
Sappho’s post-1900 reception is so diffuse as to make all accounts selective. Good starting points, which attempt an overview, are provided in Reynolds 2000, duBois 2015, and Greene 1996b. Balmer 2013 is a rich reflection on the long history of translation practice in relation not only to Sappho, but also to other classical poets.
The topic of Sappho in Australasia per se has not been addressed by scholars and is still in need of research. For examples of classical reception in Australia and New Zealand, see the edited collections Burton et al. 2017, Johnson 2019.
Ragusa 2005 explores the representations of Sappho in antiquity and compares them to the descriptions of the goddess Aphrodite in her poems. On translation, orality, and the feminine in Sappho, Flores 2017, in the introduction to his translation, ‘Safo de Lesbos: corpo, corpos, corpus’ (‘Sappho of Lesbos: body, bodies, body of work’, pp. 7–22), frames the translation of Sappho’s fragments by taking advantage of their modern and contemporary reception. For the history of the translation of the classics in Brazil, see Duarte 2016; for contemporary trends in the translation of Greek poetry, see Oliva Neto 2015, a special issue of the journal Cadernos de literatura em tradução. For the broader topic of classics in Hispanic America, see the collection Maquieira and Fernández 2012 (the most geographically comprehensive), González de Tobía 2001 ≈ 2005, 2008, Laird 2007, Taboada 2014. For classical scholarship in Spain and Hispanic Latin America until the sixties, see Demetrius 1965.
See DeJean 1989a and Prins 1999 for rewritings and fictionalisations of Sappho. Though critical of Klausner’s novel, Silberschlag 1977 offers a cogent overview of Hellenic influences on modern Hebrew literature. Close readings of fr. 168B in Reiner and Kovacs 1993 and in D. Clay 2011 address lingering questions of authorship, as well as the text’s reference to astronomy and celestial phenomena.
For more on the reception of classical literature in India, see Vasunia 2013, although he does not mention Sappho. The thirty-six volume Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo, now available online (www.sriaurobindoashram.org/sriaurobindo/writings.php), will repay further study, as he both commented on and imitated many classical authors.
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