Lyric poetry, rooted in the practice of a single voice expressing feeling and originally accompanied by music, has given rise to the purest literary form: the composition of the self.

This module examines the history, theory, and methodologies of the English lyric since the Renaissance to the present day, providing not only a broad historical survey of major traditions of the vernacular short poem (keyed to manuscript, publication, and reception), but also engaging with a range of recent theoretical assessments of lyric as a genre and an construction of selfhood. In particular, the course looks to poetic, linguistic, and psychoanalytic theory to help unravel the intricate historical processes that embody the speaking subject; the singular voice of the lyric 'I'.

Among the major collections we will explore will be Richard Tottel’s Songes and Sonnets of 1557, in which the poetry of Wyatt and Surrey first circulated; Shakespeare’s Sonnets as published in 1609; Donne's Songs and Sonnets; Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads of 1798; the private verse of Emily Dickinson; Modernist writers, such as Yeats, Eliot, and Pound; more recent 'Confessional' and experimental writers such as Sylvia Plath, Derek Walcott, and Susan Howe; and, finally, songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, and Nick Cave. Most primary materials are available in the Norton Anthologies; theoretical and methodological work will be drawn from Jackson and Prins, eds., The Lyric Theory Reader.

This course is part of the In-depth Courses States of Literature.

LAS and TCS students who follow this course as part of the core curriculum of their major, need to complete a compulsory preparation course/assignment. See for more information: https://tcs.sites.uu.nl/