What sort of thing is a lyric poem? An intense expression of subjective experience? The fictive speech of a specifiable persona? Theory of the Lyric reveals the limitations of these two conceptions of the lyric—the older Romantic model and the modern conception that has come to dominate the study of poetry—both of which neglect what is most striking and compelling in the lyric and falsify the long and rich tradition of the lyric in the West. Jonathan Culler explores alternative conceptions offered by this tradition, such as public discourse made authoritative by its rhythmical structures, and he constructs a more capacious model of the lyric that will help readers appreciate its range of possibilities. “Theory of the Lyric brings Culler’s own earlier, more scattered interventions together with an eclectic selection from others’ work in service to what he identifies as a dominant need of the critical and pedagogical present: turning readers’ attention to lyric poems as verbal events, not fictions of impersonated speech. His fine, nuanced readings of particular poems and kinds of poems are crucial to his arguments. His observations on the workings of aspects of lyric across multiple different structures are the real strength of the book. It is a work of practical criticism that opens speculative vistas for poetics but always returns to poems.” —Elizabeth Helsinger, Critical Theory

Reading lyric poetry over the past century. The Lyric Theory Reader collects major essays on the modern idea of lyric, made available here for the first time in one place. Representing a wide range of perspectives in Anglo-American literary criticism from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the collection as a whole documents the diversity and energy of ongoing critical conversations about lyric poetry. Virginia Jackson and Yopie Prins frame these conversations with a general introduction, bibliographies for further reading, and introductions to each of the anthology’s ten sections: genre theory, historical models of lyric, New Criticism, structuralist and post-structuralist reading, Frankfurt School approaches, phenomenologies of lyric reading, avant-garde anti-lyricism, lyric and sexual difference, and comparative lyric. Designed for students, teachers, scholars, poets, and readers with a general interest in poetics, this book presents an intellectual history of the theory of lyric reading that has circulated both within and beyond the classroom, wherever poetry is taught, read, discussed, and debated today.

In Lyric Tactics, Ingrid Nelson argues that the lyric poetry of later medieval England is a distinct genre defined not by its poetic features—rhyme, meter, and stanza forms—but by its modes of writing and performance, which are ad hoc, improvisatory, and situational.

Advanced Students Of Literary Criticism Would Definitely Find This Book Stimulating As Well As Illuminating As It Presents A Penetrating Analysis Of The Major Theories And Practices Of All The Dominant Groups Of Literacy Critics Of Our Times. In The Course Of The Critical Survey Of The Critical Principles And Methods Of All The Major Cities, The Chicago Critics Attempt A Critique Of Contemporary Criticism In Their Monumental Work, Critics And Criticism: Essays In Method Of The Chicago Critics. Hence, The Focus Of This Book Is On The Pluralistic Approach Of These Critics Who Were Aware Of The Powers And Limitations Of All The Critical Methods. Each Critical Method, Even The Aristotelian Method For Which They Developed A Bias, Addresses A Certain Range Of Questions Beyond Which It Loses Its Utility. No Critical Method, As They Point Out, Is All Embracing Critical System Of Critical Philosophy. Critics Having Exclusive Commitment To A Particular Critical System Are Bound To Be Partial Critics. So A Pluralistic Approach Should Be The Ideal One But, In Order To Be A Pluralistic Critic, A Student Of Literary Criticism Must Be Conversant With All The Major Critical Approaches. The Present Book Is Significant In The Sense That It Has The Capacity To Train Teachers And Students Of Literature In The Art Of Literary Appreciation That Enhances The Enjoyment Of Literary Works. Since Every Literary Piece Is A Constructed Whole, Aristotle S Method Provides Clues To Its Specific Constructive Principle Through A Process Of Regressive Reasoning The Aposteriori Approach. The Special Discussion Of The Chicago Method In This Book Explains The Aristotelian Bias Of The Chicago Critics Who Were Actually Neo-Aristotelians In A Limited Sense. They Began Where Aristotle Left Off To Pursue Similar Lines Of Study In The Poetics Of Modern Literature.As The Chicago School Of Criticism Is A Brilliant Exercise In Remedial Criticism, This Book May Serve As Materia Medica Of Critical Theories And Practices For Students And Teachers Of Literary Criticism.

Modern readers can sometimes be unsure about the language and the literary conventions of medieval and Renaissance verse--lyrical works written at a time before poetry was assumed to be about personal expression. This readers' guide introduces to a 21st century audience some of the greatest masterpieces of English poetry spanning five centuries. Focusing on poems by Chaucer, Wyatt, Shakespeare, Milton and others, the author discusses the development of poetic technique, explains the rhetorical culture of earlier centuries and describes the various lyric forms--including lover's complaints, sonnets and elegies--that poets used to communicate with readers.

Genre in Archaic and Classical Greek Poetry foregrounds innovative approaches to the question of genre, what it means, and how to think about it for ancient Greek poetry and performance. Embracing multiple definitions of genre and lyric, the volume pushes beyond current dominant trends within the field of Classics to engage with a variety of other disciplines, theories, and models. Eleven papers by leading scholars of ancient Greek culture cover a wide range of media, from Sappho’s songs to elegiac inscriptions to classical tragedy. Collectively, they develop a more holistic understanding of the concept of lyric genre, its relevance to the study of ancient texts, and its relation to subsequent ideas about lyric.

"Offering readers a rare glimpse into collaborations between poets and painters from the 1950s to the present, this book highlights how the artist's book became a critical form for experimental American artists in the 20th and 21st centuries. In addition to providing a broad overview of the artist's book form since 1945 and the many ongoing debates surrounding it, this book thinks through the challenges, from the disciplinary to the institutional, that these forms continue to pose. It then turns to look at five case studies, detailing not only how each individual collaboration came to be but how all five together engage and challenge conventional ideals about art, subjectivity, poetry, and interpersonal relations, as well as complex social questions related to gender and race. Making several of these books, typically consigned to special collections libraries and museum archives, more available to a broad readership, the book aims to brings to light a whole genre of works that has been largely forgotten or neglected in critical scholarship and institutional exhibitions. As this study illustrates, the artist's book has been an especially rich site for both poets and painters to engage with the world around them and with each other since the mid-twentieth century and consequently deserves more scholarly and institutional attention than it has been previously granted"--

What do we mean when call something a lyric poem? How many kinds of lyric are there? Are there fewer now than there were in 1920 or 1820 or 1620? The purpose of Forms of Late Modernist Lyric is to show that our oldest styles of poetic articulation – the elegy, the ode, the hymn – have figured all too briefly in modern genealogies of lyric, and that they have proved especially seductive, curiously enough, to avant-garde practitioners in the Anglophone tradition. The poets in question – Jorie Graham, Frank O’Hara, Michael Haslam, J. H. Prynne, Claudia Rankine, and others – have thickened the texture of lyric practice at a time when the growing tendency in critical circles has been to dissolve points of difference within the genre itself. The broader aim of this volume is to demonstrate that experimental poets since 1945 have not always been rebarbative and anti-traditional, but rather that their recourse to familiar forms and shapes of thought should prompt us to reconsider late modernism as a crucial phase in the evolving history of lyric. CONTRIBUTORS: Ruth Abbott, Edward Allen, Gareth Farmer, Fiona Green, Drew Milne, Jeremy Noel-Tod, Sophie Read, Matthew Sperling, Esther Osorio Whewell, John Wilkinson

The Handbook of British Romanticism is a state of the art investigation of Romantic literature and theory, a field that probably changed more quickly and more fundamentally than any other traditional era in literary studies. Since the early 1980s, Romantic studies has widened its scope significantly: The canon has been expanded, hitherto ignored genres have been investigated and new topics of research explored. After these profound changes, intensified by the general crisis of literary theory since the turn of the millennium, traditional concepts such as subjectivity, imagination and the creative genius have lost their status as paradigms defining Romanticism. The handbook will feature discussions of key concepts such as history, class, gender, science and the use of media as well as a thorough account of the most central literary genres around the turn of the 19th century. The focus of the book, however, will lie on a discussion of key literary texts in the light of the most recent theoretical developments. Thus, the Handbook of British Romanticism will provide students with an introduction to Romantic literature in general and literary scholars with a discussion of innovative and groundbreaking theoretical developments.