Sappho Summary?

Question

Can you give me a summary about this Greek poet name Sappho i have to do a report and its do on Friday: Please and Thank You

Answer 1

Sappho was a Greek poetess and teacher at a girls school on the Island of Lesbos during the 6th century B.C. The exact dates of her birth and death are unknown. Her lyric poetry was so exquisite that Plato called her the "tenth muse." Much of her poetry was about both the ecstasy and pain of love, which was virtually unknown in poetry until that time. She also wrote hymns of praise to the Greek Goddesses, particularly Aphrodite. Not much is known about Sappho's life, and only a few of her works remain. Early translators, disturbed that many of her passionate love poems were addressed to adolescent girls, simply changed their gender in translation to fit their world view. Sappho's books were burned by Christians in 380 A.D. at the insistance of Pope Gregory Nazianzen. The rest of her works may have been destroyed in 1073 A.D. when Pope Gregory VII ordered another book burning.

hope that helps...good luck on the report

Answer 2

Oh, dear. Sappho, as a person, apparently came from/was born on Lesbos, a Greek island. The poetry that she is lauded for celebrates love between women. Seen as erotic, it perhaps, in criticism, avoids the notion of 'agape' (look it up - a different kind of selfless love). However, the island is where the term Lesbian comes from. What you need to do is reference a Gay and Lesbian reader to find out what the fuss about Sappho is REALLY all about. Paul

Answer 3

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Sappho Summary?
Can you give me a summary about this Greek poet name Sappho i have to do a report and its do on Friday: Please and Thank You

Answer 4

fl. c. 610, -c. 580 BC, Lesbos, Asia Minor
also spelled PSAPPHO, celebrated lyric poet greatly admired in all ages for the beauty of her writing. She is said to exceed all other poets, except Archilochus and Alcaeus, in the history of Greek literature in entering into a close personal relation with the reader. Her vocabulary, like her dialect, is for the most part vernacular, not literary. Her phrasing is concise, direct, and picturesque. She has the power of standing aloof and critically judging her own ecstasies and pains; but her emotions lose nothing of their force by being recollected in comparative tranquillity.
Sappho is said to have been married to Cercolas, a wealthy man from the island Andros. The tradition that she was banished with other aristocrats and went to Sicily for a time is likely to be true; most of her life, however, was spent at Mytilene on the island of Lesbos.

Her themes are invariably personal--primarily concerned with her friendships and enmities with other women--although her brother Charaxus was the subject of several poems. There are, in her work, only a few apparent allusions to the political disturbances of the time, which are so frequently reflected in the verse of her contemporary Alcaeus.

It was the fashion in Lesbos at this time for women of good family to assemble in informal societies and spend their days in idle, graceful pleasures, especially in the composition and recitation of poetry. Sappho, the leading spirit of one of these associations, attracted a number of admirers, some from distant places. The principal themes of her poetry are the loves and jealousies and hates that flourished in that sultry atmosphere. Rival associations are fiercely or contemptuously attacked. For other women, usually nameless, Sappho expresses her feelings in terms that range from gentle affection to passionate love. Ancient writers over a period of time, having a large volume of her work in front of them, alleged that Sappho was a lesbian. Her poetry shows that she entertained emotions stronger than mere friendship toward other women, but nothing in what is extant connects her or her companions with homosexual practices.

It is not known how her poems were published and circulated in her own lifetime and for the following three or four centuries. In the era of Alexandrian scholarship (especially the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC), what remained of her work was collected and republished in a standard edition of nine books of lyrical verse and one of elegiac. This edition did not survive the early Middle Ages. By the 8th or 9th century AD Sappho was represented only by quotations in other authors. Only one poem, 28 lines long, was complete. The next longest was 16 lines. Since 1898 these fragments have been greatly increased by papyrus finds, though no complete poem has been recovered and nothing equal in quality to the two longer pieces preserved in quotations.

Answer 5

No all I know is she was a poet and was exiled on the island of Lesbos where many of her followers went as well. I'm sure she didn't have any problem finding a g/f.

Answer 6

I'm not writing a summary about some greek poet! do your own summary