SOURCE: McGann, Jerome. “Mary Robinson and the Myth of Sappho.” In Eighteenth-Century Literary History: An MLQ Reader, edited by Marshall Brown, pp. 114-35. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999.

In the following essay, McGann offers a close reading of Mary Robinson's Sappho and Phaon and explores how she re-envisions the myth surrounding the Greek poetess Sappho.

Describing the scope of her Fictions of Sappho, 1546-1937, Joan DeJean points out that the French dominated the reception history of the Greek poet until the eighteenth century, when “the English and the Germans really began to play a role.”¹ These facts explain why DeJean focuses on French traditions. But she then adds: “Once other traditions become active, I refer to all the major contributions to the composite portrait of Sappho that originate outside of France. I dwell especially on those foreign traditions when they create original fictions that subsequently serve as models for...