Female Bonding

1
Female Bonding

• Pitsa Tablet. Wooden votive tablet bearing the
  painted representation of a sacrificial
  procession. Ca. 540 B.C. National Archaeological
  Museum of Athens.

2
Female Choruses

• Institutionalized throughout Greek world
• Chiefly organized around rituals of Artemis,
  although Aphrodite, Hera, Apollo and other
  divinities were also celebrated in choral dance
• Girls as young as seven participated
• Girls continued to perform with the same group of
  companions until it was dissolved through
  marriage of its members
• Some cases of older, married women also forming
  choruses

3
Importance of Girls Chorus

• Central role in rituals of the community, hence
  gave prospective husbands a chance to view
  available brides
• Vehicle for homosocial and even homoerotic
  bonding
• Validated girls beauty and self-esteem, created
  strong womens networks
• Position of chorus leader greatly honored in
  Greek myth, princesses (Nausicaa, Helen) and
  goddesses (Artemis, the Muses) perform this
  function
• Means of instructing young women in music, dance,
  and myth
• Female as well as male composers served as
  chorus-trainers

4
Sappho and the Greek Female Poetic Tradition

• In our society, literary creativity is closely
  linked to masculinity
• The artist is assumed to be male, and his muse
  is his mistress
• The woman author therefore faces anxiety about
  being equal to the creative task
• Womens writing itself is usually denigrated

5
Women Poets of Ancient Greece

• In ancient Greek culture, female poets were
  widely read and praised
• They exerted a great deal of influence upon the
  mainstream literary tradition
• Women writers are attested in every century, all
  over the Greek world
• Canon of nine major female poets was compiled by
  Alexandrian critics
• We still have short poems and fragments by
  several of them, including Korinna, Erinna,
  Moero, Anyte, and Nossis as well as Sappho

6
Women PoetsHow?

• Why was it possible for women to rise to literary
  prominence in such a patriarchal society?
• Muse was the female emblem of poetic knowledge
  she was regarded as a powerful goddess and not
  sexualized.
• Oral tradition of song and dance provided a
  creative education for women beginning at an
  early agetraining in music, rhythm, legends,
  expression
• Womens speech genres, such as public lament
• Sappho as enabling foremother

7
Sappho (c. 650-590 BCE)

• Born into a sophisticated and cosmopolitan
  aristocratic society with close ties to the
  luxurious East, longstanding poetic tradition
• Formerly thought of as mistress of a girls
  school, she is now generally believed to be a
  composer and trainer of girls choruses
• Possibly also the leader of a religious sodality
  or thiasos dedicted to worship of Aphrodite.
  Highly contested issue, since our knowledge of
  social and religious institutions on seventh and
  sixth century Lesbos is very vague.
• Composed nine books of songs, including monodies,
  hymns, and wedding songs, intended for both
  community and more intimate performance
  (symposia? cult ceremonies?).

8
Content and Character of Sapphos Poetry

• Divine figures in the poems, especially
  Aphrodite, are on an intimate footing with the
  Sapphic speaker and her companions
• Aphrodite is invited to join the womens circle
  and celebrate their festivities along with them.
• Many poems profess desire for an absent female
  beloved, suggesting that they were composed as a
  consolation for members of the thiasos whose
  friends had left them to be married
• Focus on recollection as a means of overcoming
  loss
• Eroticism in the poems is diffuse, evoked through
  metaphors from nature
• Presupposes reciprocal desire rather than an
  effort on the part of the lover to dominate and
  possess the beloved

9
Sapphos Influence

• Profound influence on later poetic tradition
• Songs were circulated by mouth and performed by
  men at all-male gatherings
• Sapphic voice serves as an alternative to male
  poetry focusing upon war, feasting and revelry,
  struggle for honor and recognition
• In fifth century Athens, Sapphos image on vases
  evokes the escapism afforded by music, especially
  songs of love and yearning

10
Modern Greek Dancers from Salamina