Publisher's Synopsis
She lived on the island of Lesbos around 600 BCE. She composed lyric poetry, only fragments of which survive. And she was - and is - one of the most highly regarded woman poets of Greek and Roman antiquity.;Little more than this can be said with certainty about Sappho, and yet a great deal more "is" said. Her life, so little known, is the stuff of legends; her poetry, the source of endless speculation. This book is a search for Sappho through the poetry she wrote, the culture she inhabited, and the myths that have risen around her.;Margaret Williamson conducts us through ancient representations of Sappho, from vase paintings to appearances in Ovid, and traces the route by which her work has reached us, shaped along the way by excavators, editors and interpreters. She goes back to the poet's world and time to explore perennial questions about Sappho: how could a woman have access to the public medium of song?; what was the place of female sexuality in the public and religious symbolism of Greek culture?; and what is the sexual meaning of her poems? Williamson follows with a close look at the poems themselves, Sappho's "immortal daughters".
