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Chapter 2 - Lyric

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2012

Michael D. Hurley
Affiliation:
St Catharine's College, Cambridge
Michael O'Neill
Affiliation:
University of Durham
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Summary

And isn’t a song, or a poem, or indeed a speech itself, with its caesuras, pauses, spondees, and so forth, a game language plays to restructure time?

Joseph Brodsky (‘To Please a Shadow’, Less Than One)

Overview

Lyric, traditionally grouped since Aristotle’s Poetics with narrative and drama as one of the three main literary kinds or genres, has been the subject of much definitional head scratching. As Scott Brewster notes at the start of a discussion which considers the many difficulties in arriving at a single, clear-cut sense of the word, ‘the term derives from the Greek word lurikos (“for the lyre”)’, and its associations with music and with the expression of strong feeling, in a structure considerably briefer for the most part than plays or narrative poems, are at the centre of this chapter’s re-consideration of the form. Lyric can co-exist with other forms and can emerge from narrative poetry, as in ‘Tears, Idle Tears’ sung in the midst of Tennyson’s The Princess (1847), or it can contribute to a drama, as in Feste’s songs in Twelfth Night; it can sustain, as in John Berryman’s Dream Songs (first group published 1964) or Tennyson’s In Memoriam, much longer structures, whose essential unit is the short poem (as will be discussed in the final section of the chapter); it can overlap with forms such as elegy or, rather, elegy can be a poetic form that participates in the generic nature of lyric.

Type
Chapter
Information
Poetic Form , pp. 53 - 75
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2012

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References

Brewster, ScottLyricLondonRoutledge 2009Google Scholar
Brooks, CleanthThe Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of PoetryLondonDennis Dobson 1968Google Scholar
Culler, Jonathan 2008
Empson, WilliamSeven Types of AmbiguityHarmondsworthPenguin 1973Google Scholar
Johnson, James WilliamThe New Princeton Encyclopaedia of Poetry and PoeticsPrinceton, NJPrinceton University Press 1993Google Scholar
Johnson, W. R.The Idea of Lyric: Lyric Modes in Ancient and Modern PoetryBerkeley, CAU of California Press 1982Google Scholar
Ricks, ChristopherThe Force of PoetryOxfordClarendon 1984Google Scholar
Saintsbury, GeorgeA History of English Prosody: From the Twelfth Century to the Present DayLondonMacmillan 1923Google Scholar
Stewart, Susan 1995
Vendler, HelenPoems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and AnthologyBoston, MASt Martins 2002Google Scholar
Von Hallberg, RobertLyric PowersChicago, ILUniversity of Chicago Press 2008CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winters, YvorForms of Discovery: Critical and Historical Essays on the Forms of the Short Poem in EnglishChicagoSwallow Press 1967Google Scholar
Wolf, WernerTheory into Poetry: New Approaches to the LyricAmsterdamRodopi 2005Google Scholar

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  • Lyric
  • Michael D. Hurley, St Catharine's College, Cambridge, Michael O'Neill, University of Durham
  • Book: Poetic Form
  • Online publication: 05 November 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511982224.004
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  • Lyric
  • Michael D. Hurley, St Catharine's College, Cambridge, Michael O'Neill, University of Durham
  • Book: Poetic Form
  • Online publication: 05 November 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511982224.004
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Lyric
  • Michael D. Hurley, St Catharine's College, Cambridge, Michael O'Neill, University of Durham
  • Book: Poetic Form
  • Online publication: 05 November 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511982224.004
Available formats
×