Sappho
9 Apr, 2015
880 Classical and modern Greek literatures
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Greek poet Sappho. Born in the late seventh century BC, Sappho spent much of her life on the island of Lesbos. In antiquity she was famed as one of the greatest lyric poets, but owing to a series of accidents the bulk of her work was lost to posterity. The fragments that do survive, however, give a tantalising glimpse of a unique voice of Greek literature. Her work has lived on in other languages, too, translated by such major poets as Ovid, Christina Rossetti and Baudelaire.
Guests
- Edith Hall
19 episodes
Professor of Classics at King's College, London - Margaret Reynolds
2 episodes
Professor of English at Queen Mary, University of London -
Dirk Obbink No other episodes
Professor of Papyrology and Greek Literature at the University of Oxford Fellow and tutor at Christ Church, Oxford
Reading list
-
Arion's Lyre: Archaic Lyric into Hellenistic Poetry
Benjamin Acosta-Hughes (Princeton University Press, 2010) Google Books → -
Sappho: Poems and Fragments
Josephine Balmer (Bloodaxe Books, 1992) -
Greek Lyric: Sappho and Alcaeus
David A. Campbell (ed.) (Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1989) Google Books → -
'If Not, Winter': Fragments of Sappho
Anne Carson (Virago, 2003) -
Sappho's Gift: The Poet and Her Community
Franco Ferrari (Michigan Classical Press, 2009) Google Books → -
Reading Sappho: Contemporary Approaches
Ellen Greene (ed.) (University of California Press, 1998) Google Books → -
Re-reading Sappho: Reception and Transmission
Ellen Greene (ed.) (University of California Press, 1998) Google Books → -
The New Sappho on Old Age: Textual and Philosophical Issues
Ellen Greene and Marilyn Skinner (eds.) (Center for Hellenic Studies, 2010) Google Books → -
Greek Lyric Poetry: A Commentary on Selected Larger Pieces
G. O. Hutchinson (Oxford University Press, 2001) Google Books → -
Sappho and Alcaeus: An Introduction to the Study of Ancient Lesbian Poetry
Denys Page (Oxford University Press, 1990) Google Books → -
The Sappho Companion
Margaret Reynolds (Chatto and Windus, 2000) Google Books → -
The Sappho History
Margaret Reynolds (Palgrave, 2003) Google Books → -
Literature in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A New Perspective
Oliver Taplin (ed.) (Oxford University Press, 2000) Google Books → -
Sappho et Alcaeus: Fragmenta
Eva-Maria Voigt (ed.) (Polak and Van Gennep, 1971) Google Books → -
Greek Lyric Poetry: A New Translation
M. L. West (Oxford Paperbacks, 2008) Google Books → -
Sappho's Immortal Daughters
Margaret Williamson (Harvard University Press, 1998) Google Books → -
The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece
John J. Winkler (Routledge, 1989) Google Books →
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Programme ID: b05pqsk4
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05pqsk4
Auto-category: 880 (Hellenic literatures and classical Greek literature)
Hello (First sentence from this episode)
Hello. In antiquity, the Greek lyric poet Sappho was known as the Tenth Muse or as Sappho the Wise.