Research Catalog

Victorian Sappho

Title: Victorian Sappho / Yopie Prins.
Author: Prins, Yopie
Publication: Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, ©1999.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan Not available - Please for assistance.	Text	Use in library	PR129.G8 P75 1999	Off-site

Details

Description

xiii, 279 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

"What is Sappho, except a name? Although the Greek archaic lyrics attributed to Sappho of Lesbos survive only in fragments, she has been invoked for many centuries as the original woman poet, singing at the origins of a Western lyric tradition. Victorian Sappho traces the emergence of this idealized feminine figure through reconstructions of the Sapphic fragments in late-nineteenth-century England. Yopie Prins argues that the Victorian period is a critical turning point in the history of Sappho's reception; what we now call "Sappho" is in many ways an artifact of Victorian poetics. Prins reads the Sapphic fragments in Greek alongside various English translations and imitations, considering a wide range of Victorian poets--male and female, famous and forgotten--who signed their poetry in the name of Sappho. By "declining" the name in each chapter, the book presents a theoretical argument about the Sapphic signature, as well as a historical account of its implications in Victorian England. Prins explores the relations between classical philology and Victorian poetics, the tropes of lesbian writing, the aesthetics of meter, and nineteenth-century personifications of the "Poetess." as current scholarship on Sappho and her afterlife. Offering a history and theory of lyric as a gendered literary form, the book is an exciting and original contribution to Victorian studies, classical studies, comparative literature, and women's studies."

Subject

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (p. [253]-267) and indexes.

Contents

Introduction: Declining a Name -- Sappho's Broken Tongue -- Sappho Doubled: Michael Field -- Swinburne's Sapphic Sublime -- P.S. Sappho.

ISBN

0691059187
9780691059181
0691059195
9780691059198

LCCN

98028067

OCLC

ocm39291241
39291241
SCSB-568204

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library