Journal of Literary Theory (JLT)

Hartner, Marcus

Bodies, Spaces, and Cultural Models: On Bridging the Gap between Culture and Cognition [Abstract]

Hempfer, Klaus W.

 1 
Klaus W. Hempfer 
Theory of the Lyric: a Prototypical Approach 
(Abstract) 
• Full-length article in: JLT 11/1 (2017), 51–62. 
Proceeding from a distinction between ›poetry‹ and ›lyric‹, the present article outlines a 
prototype theory of the lyric as transhistorical mode. As such the lyric prototype cannot be 
defined by means of empirical tests, but is a theoretical construct that presupposes the 
knowledge of highly diverse discursive systems and traditions and the recourse to 
interpretative-hermeneutic methods for its validity. The model of the prototypical lyric the 
article proposes is based on four interdependent components: (1) a speech situation 
characterised by an I-here-now deixis; (2) a represented situation which comes into being in 
and through the simultaneous speech act based on an identical deixis; (3) a fiction of 
performativity whose performative character results from the simultaneity and coincidence of 
speech situation and represented situation, and whose fictionality is based on the fact that the 
relation of simultaneity is text-internal, thus ›staged‹, and does not conform to the 
communicative situation between producer and recipient; and finally (4) a lack of, or an 
asymmetry in, the relationship between speaker and addressee, in as far as the speaker has the 
›licence‹ to either perform a locutionary act directly and without any explicit motivation or 
addressee, or to explicitly address recipients. Unlike in normal face-to-face communication, 
however, these recipients cannot turn into speakers themselves. At best, they can function as 
quoted speakers, who are introduced by the ›speaker proper‹, and whose utterances assume the 
form of mere reported speech. 
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 2 
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2017-03-16 
JLTonline ISSN 1862-8990 
Copyright © by the author. All rights reserved. 
This work may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the author 
and JLTonline. 
For other permission, please contact JLTonline. 
How to cite this item: 
Abstract of: Klaus W. Hempfer, Theory of the Lyric: a Prototypical Approach. 
In: JLTonline (16.03.2017)   
Persistent Identifier: urn:nbn:de:0222-003491 
Link: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0222-003491 


English

Theory of the Lyric: a Prototypical Approach [Abstract]

Bruun Vaage, Margrethe

From The Corner to The Wire: On Nonfiction, Fiction, and Truth [Abstract]

Altieri, Charles

 1 
Charles Altieri 
The Lyrical Impulse 
(Abstract) 
• Full-length article in: JLT 11/1 (2017), 12–21. 
This statement does not challenge Jonathan Culler’s argument that lyric is not dramatic 
monologue but primarily »an event in the lyric present, a time of enunciation« (Culler 2014, 
68; cf. Culler 2015). But it poses an alternative view of lyricism, at least for Modernist poetry. 
The essay asks, in other words, not what lyric is, but what poets seeking to participate in a genre 
are doing and why. In »The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock«, for example, T.S. Eliot 
deliberately creates a clash between expectations born of dramatic monologue and those 
sustained by the staging of a lyric ego whose modes of presence cannot be contained within 
ironic distance. Similarly, when Yeats and Auden write lullabies, they are not content with 
individual instances of lullaby but want to capture the essence of lullaby as one aspect of levels 
of feeling inseparable from ideas of genre, not just uses of the genre. 
Lyricism also emphasizes, more than do studies of lyric as a genre, that poetry has a distinctive 
relationship to musicality. The essay develops two extended examples – in the form of a contrast 
between two poems in the first Imagist anthology Des Imagistes, namely H.D.’s (Hilda 
Doolittle’s) »Sitalkas« and Ezra Pound’s »Doria« – as an example of what Pound called 
»patterned music«, which Pound opposed to the »emotional music cultivated by the spirit of 
Impressionism«. Finally it turns to the contemporary poet Lisa Robertson’s »Sunday« as an 
instance of cultivating the power of indexicals as an alternative to any kind of overt »speaking 
situation« with its inevitably damaged versions of subjectivity. 
References 
Brower, Reuben A., Reading in Slow Motion, in: R.A.B./Richard Poirier (ed.), In Defense of 
Reading, New York 1962 3–21 (originally published in: Jacob M. Price [ed.], Reading 
for Life, Ann Arbor, 1959). 
Culler, Jonathan, Lyric, History, and Genre, in: Virginia Jackson/Yopie Prins (ed.), The Lyric 
Theory Reader, Baltimore 2014, 63–76. 
Culler, Jonathan, Theory of the Lyric, Cambridge, MA 2015. 
Hegel, Friedrich, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, transl. by T.M. Knox, Oxford 1975. 
Pound, Ezra, Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, ed. by T.S. Eliot, London 1960 (Pound 1960a). 
Pound, Ezra, Gaudier-Brzeska. A Memoir, New York 1960 (Pound 1960b). 
Pound, Ezra (ed.), Des Imagistes: An Anthology, New York 1914. 
Robertson, Lisa, The Weather, Vancouver 2001. 
Robertson, Lisa, Nilling: Prose Essays on Noise, Pornography, The Codex, Melancholy, 
Lucretius, Folds, Cities and Related Aporias, Toronto 2012. 
Sherry, Vincent, Modernism and the Reinvention of Decadence, Cambridge 2015. 
 
 2 
2017-03-16 
JLTonline ISSN 1862-8990 
Copyright © by the author. All rights reserved. 
This work may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the author 
and JLTonline. 
For other permission, please contact JLTonline. 
How to cite this item: 
Abstract of: Charles Altieri, The Lyrical Impulse. 
In: JLTonline (16.03.2017)  
Persistent Identifier: urn:nbn:de: 0222-003450 
Link: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0222-003450 


The Lyrical Impulse [Abstract]

Mucha, Katharina

Diskurs-Konstruktionen als mentale Raumkonstruktionen. Zur emotiven Funktion von Literatur aus der Perspektive kognitionslinguistischer Theoriebildungen [Abstract]

Mellmann, Katja

Paläopoetik und hermeneutisches Gehirn. Zwei beachtliche Beiträge im Bereich der Cognitive Poetics [Christopher Collins, Paleopoetics, 2013; Paul B. Armstrong, How Literature Plays with the Brain, 2013.]

Alt, Sophia

Brand, Caterina

Haazipolo, Vanessa

Literatur als Gedankenexperiment – Grenzen und Chancen einer Perspektive [Literature as Thought Experiment / Literatur als Gedankenexperiment, Nietzsche-Dokumentationszentrum, Naumburg, 16.–18. 03. 2017]

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