• DOI:10.1086/493630
• Corpus ID: 143119907

Sappho and Her Social Context: Sense and Sensuality

@article{Hallett1979SapphoAH,
  title={Sappho and Her Social Context: Sense and Sensuality},
  author={Judith P. Hallett},
  journal={Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society},
  year={1979},
  volume={4},
  pages={447 - 464}
}

• J. Hallett
• Published 1 April 1979
• History, Art
• Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society

The poetic personality of Sappho and the poetic phenomenon of Sappho have proven difficult for both ancients and moderns to understand. Later generations of ancients-Greeks of the fourth century B.C. and thereafter, Romans, and Byzantines-were unaccustomed to supreme lyric talent in a woman who wrote about seemingly private passions. Several ancient sources thus class the late seventh/early sixth century B.C. Sappho not among the leading male poets of her time, as the ninth great Greek lyric genius, but as tenth of the female Muses.1 In so doing, they may have suggested that she had not earned literary stature through toil and competition, as did the men of her field (and, according to some, as had the female poet Corinna). But by calling her a Muse they ranked her an inspired and immortal figure to whom poetic self-expression and