Sappho\u27s Mythic Models for Female Homoeroticism

This paper contends that Sappho draws upon the mythic tradition to represent female homoeroticism as queer in her poetry. First, I show how Sappho\u27s invocation of Tithonos and Helen as erotic paradigms in fragments 58 and 16 figures female same-sex love as non-normative and shadowed by loss, while also symmetrical and idealized. Then I propose that the Homeric Andromache also informs Sappho\u27s representation of her speakers\u27 desires in fragments 16 and 31, and I argue that recognizing Andromache\u27s latent example helps us to understand how Sappho, in these songs, positions female homoeroticism in painful opposition to conventional marriage