Lyric Humanity from Virgil to Flaubert

Ullrich Langer investigates why lyric representation holds a particular power to address our humanity from Virgil to Flaubert.

Ullrich Langer (Author)

9781009225250, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 16 February 2023

300 pages
23.6 x 15.6 x 1.6 cm, 0.48 kg

From the Georgics of Virgil to Flaubert's landscapes of happiness, Ullrich Langer argues that lyric representation holds a particular power to address our humanity. Ranging across a vast chronology, the book investigates how such poetry and prose activates our capacities for empathy, equity, irony and reasoning, while educating us in pleasure and helping us comprehend death. Each chapter constitutes a fresh encounter with some of the most celebrated texts of European literary history, demonstrating how the lyrical works, and what it elicits in us. Through deft rhetorical and philological analysis, the study presents the value of literary studies for both ethical purposes and aesthetic ends.

Introduction
1. Orpheus in Virgil, Ovid, Seneca: three variations on lyric humanity
2. Marot's repeated making and unmaking of death
3. Time, pleasure, and reasoning: Ronsard's Mignonne, Madame de Lafayette's letter, and Baudelaire's passer-by
4. Flaubert's lyric happiness (L'Éducation sentimentale, Un Cœur simple) 5. Lyrical recovery and return to the ordinary: Rouaud and Echenoz
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Literary studies: general [DSB], Literature & literary studies [D]