of the sexes, could provoke changes in the construction of sex/gender ⁴ differences? These questions site my discussion at the centre of current debates and dilemmas regarding male/female difference and the politically perilous process of comparativism. ⁵ Rather than proceeding in a way that could, as Rhode (1984:6) suggests, ‘inevitably, if inadvertently, flatten analysis’, I hope that the comparative processes engaged upon, the questions raised by/in this work will in fact expand the range of enquiry. The intersection of a unique site of difference—the world of Sappho of Lesbos—with the proliferation of theories, on sex/gender difference and discourse, currently engaging a late twentieth-century western culture, is opportune and exciting. The period focused on, the seventh to fifth century BC and the place, ancient Greece, present a distinctive set of cultural characteristics, eminently suitable for an analysis of poetic representation and difference. Socially, linguistically, intellectually and artistically, the developments which took place during this period were dynamic and intriguing. I believe that in this differently divided context—a socio-cultural environment oriented towards oral rather than literate texts—there was space for the co-existence of two separate but interactive lyric traditions, one concerned with the desires and pre-occupations of women, another that was configured in relation to the predilections of men. This was a poetically oriented environment which initiated the first written lyrics of our culture and continued through the divergent strains of an extraordinary tradition.

In the course of my discussion, I look to the theories of women who are reconceptualising female specificity in the late twentieth century in Europe to elucidate Sappho’s songs. Images of circles: of women, of singers, of songs, of recurring love, resonate through this analysis of a woman’s voice and constructs. To these circles I would add another circle, one that unites Sappho’s circle, or at least her songs about the circle, with women now. Although I am all too aware of the unfathomable interstice that separates ‘then’ from ‘now’, of the bulk of patriarchy dividing Sappho’s world from the desires of later women, I dream of two time/spaces in western culture where women could formulate a woman-centred framework.

There are problems which attend every attempted analysis of ancient literature, particularly archaic manuscripts such as those of Sappho of Lesbos. One difficulty is the fragmentary state of

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