This post launches a mini-grouping of articles on theatrical cross-dressing, whether at public masquerades or on stage. While reading this article I kept thinking about the use of masquerades as a dangerous liminal space in the historic romances of Georgette Heyer. Her examples sometimes post-date the masquerade era identified in this article and align solidly with the cautionary fiction of the 18th century that saw them as Not The Thing. But for a story solidly set in the early/mid 18th century, it's easy to see the possibilities of a masquerade setting for sapphic encounters.
LHMP
Blog entry
As I mentioned in the intro to the previous post, trying to interpolate the historic realities of f/f desire in the classical era is extremely difficult. Ovid's Iphis and Ianthe is multiply distanced from the internal reality of his characters. He is a man discussing f/f desire (in a context where men were not culturally expected to have any interest in the interiority of female desire), he sets his characters in a mythic past, and he places them in a Greek setting while he himself was a product of Imperial Rome.
Trying to get at the possible experiences of female homoeroticism in Classical Rome requires a lot of interpolation from data that doesn't address that specific conjunction of identities. Here's one interesting angle.
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 327 - On the Shelf for November 2025 - Transcript
(Originally aired 2025/11/01)
Welcome to On the Shelf for November 2025.
As this article points out, historians of sexuality put a lot of weight on the depiction of women-loving-women in Lucian's Dialogues of the Courtesans #5, simply because of the scarcity of references to female homoeroticism in the classical era. But Lucian's fictional episode can't be read as a realistic description of anything and must be interpreted through multiple layers of context, symbolism, and cross-reference. These can make it even more valuable as a piece of data, but much more difficult to read as a mirror of historic f/f sexuality.
We know, in the long term, that Sappho left a reputation as a poet. And much of what we have of her work is because it was quoted and cited by other authors--primarily male authors. But in Nossis we have evidence that other women poets of ancient Greece not only considered her great, but found her an inspiration for their own work.
When an article is primarily about the later reception of a historic figure, often it isn't that relevant to the Project. But when that "later" falls solidly in our scope, and the "reception" is concerned with the historic figure's queerness, then the discussion is solidly relevant, as in this article.
I always love articles like this that dissect in detail the evidence for largely unanswerable questions, yet still come to conclusions (even if ones that other scholars might dispute).
It is not at all surprising that there is a vast academic industry of Sappho studies. In the past I’ve covered a number of excellent, detailed publications that speak directly to the historic and social context of Sappho’s life and work, especially as it speaks to female same-sex relations. (Or to the reception of her life and work in other eras.) So I’ve gotten past the point of trying to include every Sappho publication I run across in someone’s bibliography, unless it looks like it might add to my existing coverage.
I found this a compelling analysis (though perhaps it was simply the goddess compelling me?)
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