The Narratological Analysis of Lyric Poetry: Studies in English Poetry from the 16th to the 20th Century

Front Cover
Walter de Gruyter, 2005 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 259 pages

This study offers a fresh approach to the theory and practice of poetry criticism from a narratological perspective. Arguing that lyric poems share basic constituents of narration with prose fiction, namely temporal sequentiality of events and verbal mediation, the authors propose the transgeneric application of narratology to the poetic genre with the aim of utilizing the sophisticated framework of narratological categories for a more precise and complex modeling of the poetic text. On this basis, the study provides a new impetus to the neglected field of poetic theory as well as to methodology. The practical value of such an approach is then demonstrated by detailed model analyses of canonical English poems from all major periods between the 16th and the 20th centuries. The comparative discussion of these analyses draws general conclusions about the specifics of narrative structures in lyric poetry in contrast to prose fiction.

From inside the book

Contents

The Theory and Methodology
1
They flee from me Jens Kiefer
15
Sonnet 107 Peter Hühn
22
The Canonization Jens Kiefer
35
To His Coy Mistress Peter Hühn
45
Verses on the Death of Dr Swift
57
Kubla Khan Peter Hühn
95
Ode on Melancholy Peter Hühn
111
The Bishop Orders His Tomb
125
Promises like PieCrust
139
The Second Coming Peter Hühn
177
Ode to Suburbia Peter Hühn
213
The Results of the Analyses
233
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases