The Challenges of Orpheus: Lyric Poetry and Early Modern England

Erscheinungsjahr 2008
ISBN: 978-0-8018-8704-8
Verlag: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIV PR

Buch, Englisch, 304 Seiten, Format (B × H): 163 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 562 g

2008 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Magazine

As a literary mode "lyric" is difficult to define precisely. While the term has conventionally been applied to brief, songlike poems expressing the speaker's interior thoughts critics have questioned many of the assumptions underlying this definition, calling into doubt the very possibility of self-expression in language.

Whereas much recent scholarship on lyric has centered on the Romantic era, Heather Dubrow turns instead to the poetry of early modern England. The Challenges of Orpheus confronts widespread assumptions about lyric, exploring such topics as its relationship to its audiences, the impact of material conditions of production and other cultural pressures, lyric's negotiations of gender, and the interactions and tensions between lyric and narrative.

Offering fresh perspectives on major texts of the period—from Wyatt's "My lute awake" to Milton's Nativity Ode—as well as poems by lesser-known figures, Dubrow extends her critical conclusions to poetry in other historical periods and to the relationship between creative writers and critics, recommending new directions for the study of lyric and of genre.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Dubrow, Heather

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Rhetoric of Lyric: Definitions, Descriptions, Disputations
2. The Domain of Echo: Lyric Audiences
3. The Craft of Pygmalion: Immediacy and Distancing
4. The Predilections of Proteus: Size and Structure
5. The Myth of Janus: Lyric and/or Narrative
6. The Rhetorics of Lyric: Conclusions and New Perspectives
Notes
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Dubrow, Heather
Heather Dubrow is the John D. Boyd, S.J., Chair in the Poetic Imagination at Fordham University.