Jonathan Culler

(Cornell University)

Narrative Theory and the Lyric

Although lyric poems frequently contain narrative elements, there have been few attempts to connect lyric poems with accounts of narrative. In this lecture, while sketching the approach to lyric of my recent Theory of the Lyric, I examine an explicit attempt to apply narratological analysis to lyric poems and an occasionally-theorized but widespread practice in Anglo-American new criticism of identifying, for every lyric, a narrator to whom the poems’ statements can be attributed. Both of these projects have significant failings and lead to a neglect of the different ways in which narrative elements figure in lyrics.

The lecture will be held in English.