Theory of the Lyric

Citation

Culler, J. (2017). Theory of the Lyric. Harvard University Press.

Chapter Summary

The book has a preface, an introduction, seven chapters and a conclusion, and runs to 416 pages in the paperback. The publisher presents it as a challenge to two familiar conceptions of the lyric: the older Romantic model of intense subjective expression, and the modern model of the fictive speech of a specifiable persona. Culler argues that both neglect what is most striking in the lyric and falsify its long history in the West. In their place he explores alternatives from that tradition, such as public discourse made authoritative by rhythmical structures, and builds a broader model of lyric from poems ranging from Sappho to Ashbery. Reviewers note that he quotes many poems in full.

Introduction

The introduction poses the question the book answers: what kind of thing is a lyric poem, and why do expression and persona, the two dominant answers, fall short? The publisher's description adds that Culler challenges the assumption that poems exist to be interpreted, and a reviewer, Elizabeth Helsinger, reads the book as urging readers to treat lyrics as verbal events rather than fictions of impersonated speech.

Chapter 1: An Inductive Approach

The title announces the method: the account is built up from poems and their features rather than deduced from a definition.

Chapter 2: Lyric as Genre

The chapter addresses lyric as a genre. Colin Burrow, reviewing the book in the London Review of Books, notes that it begins with compressed histories of both lyric and thinking about lyric.

Chapter 3: Theories of the Lyric

The chapter deals with theories of the lyric, which includes the Romantic and persona-based conceptions that the introduction sets out to correct.

Chapter 4: Rhythm and Repetition

The chapter concerns the rhythmical structures through which, in the publisher's account, lyric acquires the authority of public discourse.

Chapter 5: Lyric Address

The fifth chapter treats address, the way a lyric speaks to listeners, readers or other addressees.

Chapter 6: Lyric Structures

The sixth chapter is devoted to the structures of lyrics.

Chapter 7: Lyric and Society

The last full chapter relates lyric to its social setting.

Conclusion

A concluding section follows the seventh chapter.

Key Concepts

Introduction and Chapters 1–3

• Expression and persona models: the Romantic idea of the lyric as intense subjective expression and the modern idea of it as the speech of a fictional speaker, the two views the book argues against.
• Inductive approach: the method named in the title of Chapter 1, reasoning from poems.
• Lyric as genre: the subject of Chapter 2, followed by the theories of the lyric in Chapter 3.

Chapters 4–7 and Conclusion

• Rhythm and repetition: the rhythmical structures that, in the publisher's description, make lyric authoritative public discourse.
• Lyric address: the subject of Chapter 5.
• Lyric structures and lyric and society: the subjects of Chapters 6 and 7.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Poems at the centre. Burrow praises the choice to quote a range of well-chosen poems in full, from Sappho and Goethe to A. A. Milne and A. R. Ammons, and Helsinger calls the book a work of practical criticism that opens speculative vistas for poetics but always returns to poems; she adds that his observations on the workings of aspects of lyric across multiple structures are the real strength of the book.
• Clear conceptual map. Burrow credits Culler with an exceptional ability to see the conceptual shape beneath a critical discourse and explain it plainly, and describes the book as closer to a study of the generative grammar of lyric than to an all-encompassing model.
• Broad historical and linguistic range. The blurb describes ancient and modern poems from Sappho to Ashbery, and Jahan Ramazani praises Culler for taking the broad view across epochs and Western languages.
• A clear sequence. The chapter titles move from method (Chapter 1) through genre and theory (Chapters 2–3) to rhythm, address and structure (Chapters 4–6) and society (Chapter 7), so individual chapters can be read for a particular question.

Limitations

• Western focus. The publisher describes the book as concerned with the lyric tradition in the West, and Ramazani speaks of its range across Western languages; it is not a survey of lyric across world traditions.
• Not an all-encompassing definition. Burrow notes that the book offers a flexible account of how lyric works rather than a model of everything lyric could become; readers wanting a single definition will not find one.
• Written for a scholarly readership. K. Gale, in Choice, judged that the book will be most appreciated by scholars seeking to understand the structure of the genre; it is a theoretical intervention, not an introduction to reading poems.

Where It Fits in the Course

Culler's book is the theoretical argument within the poetry list. The Norton Introduction to Poetry teaches how to read and write about poems and should come first, and the Norton anthology of poetry supplies a large body of English-language poems on which to test Culler's claims. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics is the reference for forms, genres and devices when the argument draws on them. Kaveh Akbar's Calling a Wolf a Wolf, a contemporary collection, offers a living body of poems to read with Culler's questions in hand.

How to Use This Book

The book suits advanced undergraduates and graduate students who have taken a poetry course and have met some literary theory and close reading.

• Core: the introduction, Chapter 1 and the conclusion give the argument; Chapters 4 and 5 (rhythm and address) take up the alternatives to the expression and persona models that the publisher's description names.
• Optional by interest: Chapter 3 for a map of earlier theories, and Chapters 6 and 7 for structure and social context.
• Alongside: read each chapter with the poems it quotes, then try the same questions on poems from an anthology: is the poem best read as a speaker's expression, a persona's speech, or an address and an event? Writing a short comparison of two readings of one poem is a good exercise.