Wow! eBook
Sappho
Author(s): Marguerite Johnson (Author)
- Publisher: Bristol Classical Press
- Publication Date: 22 Feb. 2007
- Language: English
- Print length: 178 pages
- ISBN-10: 1853996904
- ISBN-13: 9781853996900
Book Description
This series of short incisive books introduces major figures of the ancient world to the modern general reader, including the essentials of each subject’s life, works, and significance for later western civilisation. In the newly created tradition of the “Ancients in Action” series, Marguerite Johnson has written a fascinating and accessible account of what remains of the life and works of the Greek poet, Sappho. Sappho’s ancient biography is covered in addition to the post-classical accounts of her life, which continue to appear, in a variety of creative and non-creative contexts, in contemporary literature and art. Sappho’s poetry, essentially preserved in tantalising fragments, is discussed in a series of thematic chapters that include her religious writings, particularly directed to the goddess of love, Aphrodite; personal interpretations of mythological themes; marriage hymns; and love songs to female companions.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“In this work on Sappho, Marguerite Johnson, who is a Lecturer in Classics at the University of Newle (NSW, ), has produced a stimulating and well-rounded study of her subject, replete with aptly-chosen detail, presented in an eminently readable style that sparkles with the gems of Sappho s oeuvre without compromising the rigour of its scholarship.”
About the Author
Marguerite Johnson is Honorary Professor (Classics and Ancient History) at The University of Queensland. She is an interdisciplinary cultural historian of the ancient Mediterranean, and a comparative cultural analyst, emphasising literary-informed cultural paradigms, underpinned by the theoretical praxes of both gender and post-colonial theories. Her research explores themes in sexualities, gender, and the body, particularly the erotic poets Sappho, Catullus and Ovid, and myths and fables, Eros, and gender in the works of Plato. Key publications include Sexuality in Greek and Roman Literature and Society: A Sourcebook, 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2022); as editor, Antipodean Antiquities: Classical Reception Down Under (Bloomsbury, 2019); Ovid on Cosmetics: Medicamina Faciei Femineae and Related Texts (Bloomsbury, 2016); as co-editor with Harold Tarrant, Alcibiades and the Socratic Lover-Educator (Duckworth, 2012).
