The Most Recent "New Sappho" and Its Indo-European and Greek Resonances

Activity Type: 
Lecture
Presenter: 
Edwin D. Floyd
Date: 
Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - 16:00
Event Status: 
As Scheduled
Location: 
337 Cathedral of Learning

Every few years, important new material concerning Greek lyric poetry comes to light. The most recent is the announcement of some potentially extremely important new fragments of Sappho's poetic oeuvre. Unfortunately, there are also many questions associated with this; cf. Adrian Murdoch's blog, "Bread & Circuses", at this site.
The original posting of the new article was, however, still available (as of Feb. 4) here. *Scoll down the webpage, which is in French for the English text. (That site, dealing with literature "littérature" indeed uses the spelling "actualitte".)
Muddying the waters, beyond the mere question of possible forgery, is another point that seems not to have been mentioned (as of Feb. 4) in online discussion of the newly circulated poem concerning Sappho's brother Charaxos. This is the fact that the poem contains some fairly straightforward (and potentially very important) Indo-European poetic patterning, paralleling what is found in Sappho, fr. 58, published in 2005.

UCIS Unit: 
European Studies Center
Non-University Sponsors: 
Department of Classics
World Regions: 
Western Europe