Pavlidou-Elamin, Marina; (2025) Sappho and the Senses. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This dissertation offers the first comprehensive study of the synaesthetic dimensions of Sappho’s poetic corpus, re-evaluating her songs through a sensory and embodied lens. Sappho displays an extraordinary sensitivity to synaesthetic interactions, where sensory experiences are transmuted, assimilated, and integrated into another, or expressed in terms of another. She often begins one verse with a sense and ends with another, or transfers qualities associated with one sense to another. Drawing from critical phenomenology, feminist and queer theory, performance studies, New Materialism, and sensory studies, I argue that Sappho deploys synaesthesia not only as embellishment but also as an ideological and affective framework for expressing beauty, community, intimacy, desire, and ritual. The study, structured around the themes of habrosynē, community, eroticism, and divine presence, shows that Sappho’s attention to embodiment and sensory perception is female-centred. Through close readings of her lyrics, enriched with various strands of theory, I explore how Sappho constructs a multisensory aesthetic that fuses perception, emotion, and memory. In her lyrics, the senses sustain memory, express longing and pleasure, and forge and maintain bonds, especially among women. They also enhance erotic and sacred atmospheres and invoke the divine. Special attention is paid to the role of habrosynē as both an aesthetic value and a sensory mode that shapes atmospheres and social identity in Sappho’s multisensory lyrics. These close readings are complemented by linguistic analyses that reveal the poetic function of sensory terms and imagery. I account for her poems’ sensory world and performative ritual settings, reconstructing the sensory impressions introduced in the poems, their effect on audiences, and the sensory experiences and moods they recreate for readers or listeners. A synaesthetic approach allows us to perceive more clearly how deeply intertwined sensory experience is with poetic language, gendered expression, emotions, and memory in Sappho’s work.

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