SOURCE: Snyder, Jane McIntosh. “Sappho's Challenge to the Homeric Inheritance” and “Sappho's Other Lyric Themes.” In Lesbian Desire in the Lyrics of Sappho, pp. 63-77, 97-121. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

In the following excerpts, Snyder examines how Sappho's lyric poetry recontextualizes the patriarchal and heterosexual world of the Homeric epic, also surveying several of her lesser-known poetic fragments.

Despite obvious differences in scope, purpose, and tone, scholars have frequently noted the similarities between Homer's epics and Sappho's lyrics. Remarking on echoes in diction, phraseology, and themes, one critic inquires, “Why does [Sappho] use a pseudo-Homeric ‘mode of writing’?”¹ He goes on to explain the parallels on the basis of social history, claiming that Sappho must have turned to the language of Homer's epics in an attempt to recover the lost heroic world of the old aristocracy, which was rapidly crumbling away during the period of political chaos...