Nagy, Gregory2020-05-072009Nagy, Gregory. 2009. The Fragmentary Muse and the Poetics of Refraction in Sappho, Sophocles, Offenbach (updated). In Theater des Fragments: Performative Strategien im Theater zwischen Antike und Postmoderne, ed. Anton Bierl, Gerald Siegmund, Christoph Meneghetti and Clemens Schuster, 69-102. Bielefeld: Transcript.9783839409992http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:42664030The idea of a fragmentary Muse comes from a fragmentary opera, The Tales of Hoffmann (Les Contes d’Hoffmann), by Jacques Offenbach. Such a Muse, I argue, embodies a complex metaphor that I sum up in one word, refraction. This metaphor, which recurs several times in that opera, derives from the idea that light ‘breaks’ through a prism or lens.en-USJournal Article2020-05-0710.14361/9783839409992-006