(1) Writing about Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh in 1978, Lorna Sage drew attention to the "slump" in its reputation after the success it had first enjoyed after its 1856 publication: at first, she argued, it seemed to have successfully liberated the epic form from a male monopoly; subsequently, though, a ringletted Barrett Browning morphed into "almost the archetype of the powerless, fey poetess".
Sappho
Definition:
(n.) Any one of several species of brilliant South American humming birds of the genus Sappho, having very bright-colored and deeply forked tails; -- called also firetail.
Example Sentences:
(1) Do I expect them to appreciate the sexually terroristic satires of Sade, or the erogenous verse of Sappho and Catullus, or Nicholson Baker's comical romp Vox?
(2) Among other legends, the lovelorn poet Sappho is said to have ended her life here.
(3) Lesbos is one of the biggest of all the Greek islands, and a long visit and exploration will reveal why it is still beloved by artists, historians and modern Sapphos .
(4) The task is complicated by Donne's penchant for flouting literary and social convention as he successively overturns Ovid's influential portrayal of Sappho as an aging voluptuary reclaimed for heterosexuality, the virulent homophobia of Renaissance humanists, and the coy idealizations and transient evocation given to lesbian affectivity by the very few Renaissance writers (including Shakespeare) who touched on the subject at all.
(5) Those taking part were: Jackie Forster, Co-editor of Sappho; lesbian feminist magazine; Carola Haigh, General Practitioner, London; Ian Kennedy, Barrister and Lecturer in Law, Kings College, London; Anthony Parsons, Gynaecology Department, Kings College Hospital, London; Jennifer Pietroni, General Practitioner, London; Gordon Price, Department of Child & Family Psychiatry, Kings College Hospital, London; Rose Robertson, from Parents Enquiry, a counselling organisation for families where there is an incidence of Homosexuality and where it is causing stress.
(6) Her narrator Patroclus, she has said, sees the world "more like Sappho and Catullus than Homer"; he is a lover, not a fighter, swept up in the war because he is inseparable from Achilles.
(7) While many of Twombly's works have classical and literary associations – titles such as the School of Athens and inscribed lines by Sappho, Mallarmé, Keats or Catullus – not all of his oeuvre is so ethereal.