The Lyric Poem
Formations and Transformations

A wide-ranging study of lyric poetry in English, from the early modern period to the present.

Marion Thain (Edited by)

9781107010840, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 7 November 2013

260 pages, 1 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.7 x 1.8 cm, 0.54 kg

'… a carefully crafted collection.' The Times Literary Supplement

As a study of lyric poetry, in English, from the early modern period to the present, this book explores one of the most ancient and significant art forms in Western culture as it emerges in its various modern incarnations. Combining a much-needed historicisation of the concept of lyric with an aesthetic and formal focus, this collaboration of period-specialists offers a new cross-historical approach. Through eleven chapters, spanning more than four centuries, the book provides readers with both a genealogical framework for the understanding of lyric poetry within any particular period, and a necessary context for more general discussion of the nature of genre.

Introduction Marion Thain
1. 'Words for music, perhaps': early modern songs and lyric David Lindley
2. Neither here nor there: deixis and the sixteenth-century sonnet Heather Dubrow
3. 'Trewly wrote': manuscript, print and the lyric in the early seventeenth century Thomas Healy
4. Lyric and the English revolution Nigel Smith
5. Modulation and expression in the lyric ode, 1660–1750 David Fairer
6. Eighteenth-century high lyric: William Collins and Christopher Smart Marcus Walsh
7. The retuning of the sky: Romanticism and lyric David Duff
8. Victorian lyric pathology and phenomenology Marion Thain
9. Modernism and the limits of lyric Peter Nicholls
10. The lyric 'I' in late-twentieth-century English poetry Neil Roberts
11. No man is an I: recent developments in the lyric Ian Patterson
Afterword Jonathan Culler.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH], Literary studies: general [DSB]