SOURCE: Skinner, Marilyn B. “Corinna of Tanagra and Her Audience.” Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 2, no. 1 (spring 1983): 9-20.

In the following essay, Skinner contrasts the views of Corinna and Sappho concerning their roles as women artists in ancient Greece.

Current scholarly perception of Corinna seems to be colored by an awareness of her sex: it matters much whether she is being regarded as an ancient Greek poet or as an ancient Greek woman poet writing for other women.¹ Although her work was popular in the early Roman empire—surprisingly so, in view of its dismissal by many modern critics—nothing survives outside of brief quotations and a few tattered papyrus fragments. Still, the remnants do permit us to form an impression of its general content and style. One fragment (PMG [D. L. Page, Poeatae Melici Graeci, 1962] 655), which served as a programmatic introduction to a collection of her poems...