L'erotismo saffico in "Long Ago" (1889) di Michael Field

In 1889, under the nom de plume of Michael Field, the “poets and lovers” Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper, published a collection of Sapphic poems titled Long Ago. Michael Field participated actively in the cultural milieu of Victorian aestheticism and, by including the Greek text of fragments by Sappho in each poem of the collection, the poetic duo pioneered the use of ancient Greek in lesbian self-representation. From the perspective of Women’s and Gender Studies, the essay will draw attention to the use of Greek language made by the poets Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper, who, as women were excluded from the homosocial group of Oxford educated men. In particular, the study will focus on how, in Michael Field’s poetry, we can trace the elements of a “counter-discourse” on the role that the reception of ancient same-sex love (“Greek love”) played in the construction of modern British homosexual identities in terms of lesbian relationships.