Lyric History: Temporality, Rhetoric, and the Ethics of Poetry
TL;DR: The authors argue that the meaning of lyric and its engagement with the world exists in the futurity of its reader, the unpredictable phenomenology of its reception, and that history itself has a lyrical aspect.
Abstract: In this essay, I am less interested in the specifics of the on-going polemics around the "new lyricism," than I am in the problematics of historical engagement and ethical implication that subtend them and open onto more general problematics of textuality, history, and interpretation that lyrics often foreground. These problematics do not obviate the importance of historical considerations in lyrical reading, nor do they undermine the crucial importance of history itself in our social and political lives. To refocus critical attention on poetry's connection with its readers and the world, as in the new lyric studies, also reminds us that lyric has a rhetorical aspect and that the indeterminacies of lyric's representation of a recollected moment of being or experience cannot be resolved by appeals to history as a ground for interpretation. The meaning of lyric and its engagement with the world exists in the futurity of its reader, the unpredictable phenomenology of its reception. Paradoxically, the historicization of lyric reminds us that history itself has a lyrical aspect. It combines recollection and projection, a statement of a past experience or state of being addressed to the subjectivity of a future reader or audience whose
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TL;DR: In this article, the discourse of natural beauty, the city and the self, Phillip Mallet pollution, defilement and the art of decomposition, David Carroll ''mappa mundi, anima mundi'' - imaginative mapping and environmental representation, Denis Cosgrove \"A great entail\" - the historic environment, Gill Chitty the role of the railways, Jeffrey Richards the National Trust - preservation or provision?, John Walton environment and apocalypse, Michael Wheeler conclusion, Terry Gifford.
Abstract: Introduction, Michael Wheeler the discourse of natural beauty, Keith Hanley the city and the self, Phillip Mallet pollution, defilement and the art of decomposition, David Carroll \"mappa mundi, anima mundi\" - imaginative mapping and environmental representation, Denis Cosgrove \"A great entail\" - the historic environment, Gill Chitty the role of the railways, Jeffrey Richards the National Trust - preservation or provision?, John Walton environment and apocalypse, Michael Wheeler conclusion, Terry Gifford.
53 citations
TL;DR: Cameron as mentioned in this paper suggests that the temporal problems of Dickinson's poems are frequently exaggerations of the features that distinguish the lyric as a genre, and that it is precisely the distance some of her poems go toward the far end of coherence, precisely the outlandishness of their extremity, that allows us to see, magnified, the fine workings of more conventional lyrics.
Abstract: \"Lyric Time\" offers a detailed critical reading of a particularly difficult poet, an analysis of the dominance of temporal structures and concerns in the body of her poetry, and finally, an important original contribution to a theory of the lyric. Poised between analysis of Emily Dickinson's poetic texts and theoretical inquiry, \"Lyric Time\" suggests that the temporal problems of Dickinson's poems are frequently exaggerations of the features that distinguish the lyric as a genre. \"It is precisely the distance some of Dickinson's poems go toward the far end of coherence, precisely the outlandishness of their extremity, that allows us to see, magnified, the fine workings of more conventional lyrics,\" writes Sharon Cameron. \"Lyric Time\" is written for the literary audience at large-- Dickinsonians, romanticists, theorists, anyone interested in American poetry, or in poetry at all, and especially anyone who admires a risky book that succeeds.
9 citations
TL;DR: The Spring Now Come att Last (SWL) from Pamphilia to Amphilanthus (1621) as discussed by the authors explores parallels between Wroth's poem and the metamorphosis of the Heliades, who turn into poplars while mourning their brother Phaeton in book 2 of the Metamorphoses.
Abstract: The language of arboreal metamorphosis in Lady Mary Wroth’s pastoral song “The Spring Now Come att Last” from Pamphilia to Amphilanthus (1621) may invoke the myth of Apollo and Daphne. However, the Ovidian narrative so central to Petrarchan poetics celebrates the male poet by erasing the female voice. This essay instead explores parallels between Wroth’s poem and the metamorphosis of the Heliades, who turn into poplars while mourning their brother Phaeton in book 2 of the Metamorphoses. Their transformation is predicated on an act of female speech, however precarious and evanescent. This alternative Ovidian scenario offers a model of lyric that capitalizes on the brief resonance that the female voice acquires at the point of vanishing. By deploying it in her song, Wroth not only rewrites Petrarch through Ovid in order to articulate a gendered lyric voice but shows herself a poet attuned to the crucial developments in English lyric of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in particular the complex relationship between the Petrarchan and the Ovidian legacies.
8 citations
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Book•
01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: Regarding the Pain of Others as mentioned in this paper is a searing analysis of our numbed response to images of horror, from Goya's Disasters of War to news footage and photographs of the conflicts in Vietnam, Rwanda and Bosnia, pictures have been charged with inspiring dissent, fostering violence or instilling apathy in us, the viewer.
Abstract: Regarding the Pain of Others is Susan Sontag's searing analysis of our numbed response to images of horror. From Goya's Disasters of War to news footage and photographs of the conflicts in Vietnam, Rwanda and Bosnia, pictures have been charged with inspiring dissent, fostering violence or instilling apathy in us, the viewer. Regarding the Pain of Others will alter our thinking not only about the uses and meanings of images, but about the nature of war, the limits of sympathy, and the obligations of conscience. "Powerful, fascinating. Sontag is our outstanding contemporary writer in the moralist tradition". (Sunday Times). "A coruscating sermon on how we picture suffering". (The New York Times). "A far-reaching set of ruminations on human suffering, the nature of goodness, the lures, deceptions and truth of images ...in short, a summary of what it means to be alive and alert in the twentieth century". (Independent). "Sontag is on top form: firing devastating questions". (Los Angeles Times). "Simple, elegant, fiercely persuasive". (Metro). One of America's best-known and most admired writers, Susan Sontag was also a leading commentator on contemporary culture until her death in December 2004. Her books include four novels and numerous works of non-fiction, among them Regarding the Pain of Others, On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, At the Same Time, Against Interpretation and Other Essays and Reborn: Early Diaries 1947-1963, all of which are published by Penguin. A further eight books, including the collections of essays Under the Sign of Saturn and Where the Stress Falls, and the novels The Volcano Lover and The Benefactor, are available from Penguin Modern Classics.
2,058 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1980
TL;DR: Barthes shares his passionate, in-depth knowledge and understanding of photography in Reflections on Photography as mentioned in this paper, examining the themes of presence and absence, the relationship between photography and theatre, history and death.
Abstract: Barthes shares his passionate, in-depth knowledge and understanding of photography. Examining the themes of presence and absence, the relationship between photography and theatre, history and death, these 'reflections on photography' begin as an investigation into the nature of photographs. Then, as Barthes contemplates a photograph of his mother as a child, the book becomes an exposition of his own mind.
2,002 citations
TL;DR: Bourdieu as discussed by the authors develops an original theory of art conceived as an autonomous value and argues powerfully against those who refuse to acknowledge the interconnection between art and the structures of social relations within which it is produced and received.
Abstract: Written with verve and intensity (and a good bit of wordplay), this is the long-awaited study of Flaubert and the modern literary field that constitutes the definitive work on the sociology of art by one of the world's leading social theorists. Drawing upon the history of literature and art from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, Bourdieu develops an original theory of art conceived as an autonomous value. He argues powerfully against those who refuse to acknowledge the interconnection between art and the structures of social relations within which it is produced and received. As Bourdieu shows, art's new autonomy is one such structure, which complicates but does not eliminate the interconnection. The literary universe as we know it today took shape in the nineteenth century as a space set apart from the approved academies of the state. No one could any longer dictate what ought to be written or decree the canons of good taste. Recognition and consecration were produced in and through the struggle in which writers, critics, and publishers confronted one another.
1,764 citations
621 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1986
TL;DR: Mitchell as mentioned in this paper explores the nature of images by comparing them with words, or more precisely by looking at them from the viewpoint of verbal language, and the most lucid exposition of the subject I have ever read".
Abstract: "[Mitchell] undertakes to explore the nature of images by comparing them with words, or, more precisely, by looking at them from the viewpoint of verbal language. . . . The most lucid exposition of the subject I have ever read".--Rudolf Arnheim, "Times Literary Supplement"
602 citations