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The Lyric - an Elusive Genre Problems of Definition and a Proposal for Reconceptualization

Author(s): Werner Wolf

Source: AAA: Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik , 2003, Vol. 28, No. 1 (2003), pp. 59-91

Published by: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH Co. KG

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43025690

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AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik

Band 28 (2003) • Heft 1 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen

The Lyric - an Elusive Genre Problems of Definition and a Proposal for Reconceptualization1

Werner Wolf

For Walter Bernhart on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter.

Try again. Fail again. Fail better. (Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho)

The lyric is a highly problematic category: although it features as a widely used and accepted generic term both in literary research and teaching, it has re- mained elusive and is perhaps the most ill-defined literary genre - in spite of repeated attempts to grasp its essence. Apart from textuality and fictionality there is in fact not a single criterion which fits all texts that can be called lyric'. In the following this precarious nature of most of the alleged qualities of the lyric is used as the starting point of a modest proposal for a reconceptualization of this genre: this reconceptualization departs from former attempts to define the lyric through fixed and essential qualities within a 'digital', binary framework of inclusion or exclusion and instead adopts a cognitive and prototypical approach. It is argued that this framework is particularly suited to the flexibility of the lyric, as it permits a conception of its typical traits (nine of which are discussed here as especially relevant), not as necessary qualities, but rather as tendencies. In individual cases these tendencies can be absent, so that even less obviously lyric texts such as Seamus Heaney's prose poem "Incertus" can still be sub- sumed under the generic term 'lyric' - provided they possess a 'family resem-

1 An extended version of parts of this essay, entitled "The Lyric: Problems of Definition and a Proposal for Reconceptualization", is to appear in: Müller-Zettelmann/Rubik, eds. 2003. I would like to thank Sarah Mercer, Ingrid Pfandl-Buchegger and Martin Löschnigg for their help in various stages of the manuscript (Sarah Mercer also for encouraging me to test empirically some of the notions proposed in the following) as well as the students of English at the University of Graz who participated in the empirical test.

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60 Werner Wolf

blance' to the prototype. The proposal made here, including the prototypical components of the lyric, have been tested in a small empirical survey carried out among students of English at the University of Graz.

1 . Introduction: the lyric - a notoriously elusive genre

Scholarly discussions of definitions ought to start, if possible, with illustrations of some of the phenomena that are commonly regarded as relevant or related to the fields under consideration. In the case which is at issue here

such illustrations are in fact possible:

Example 1 : Anon., "The Cuckoo Song" (13th-14th c.; Allison et al., eds. 1983: 3)

Sing, cuccu, nu. Sing, cuccu Sing, cuccu. Sing, cuccu, nu.

Summer is i-cumen in -

Lhude sing, cuccu! Groweth sed and bloweth med

And springth the wude nu. Sing, cuccu!

Awe bleteth after lomb, Lhouth after calve cu,

Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth - Murie sing, cuccu! Wei singes thu, cuccu.

Ne swik thu naver nu!

Example 2: Edmund Spenser, "Sonnet 81" from Amoretti (1595, Allison et al., eds. 1983: 137)

Fayre is my love, when her fayre golden heares, With the loose wynd ye waving chance to marke: Fayre when the rose in her red cheekes appeares, Or in her eyes the fyre of love does sparke. Fayre when her brest lyke a rich laden barke, With pretious merchandize she forth doth lay: Fayre when that cloud of pryde, which oft does dark Her goodly light with smiles she drives away. But fayrest she, when so she doth display, The gate with pearles and rubyes richly dight: Throgh which her words so wise do make their way To beare the message of her gentle spright. The rest be wonders of natures wonderment, But this the worke of harts astonishment.

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The Lyric - an Elusive Genre 61

Example 3: Alexander Pope, "Spring" from Pastorals (Pope 1704/1963: 123-125)

Spring. The First Pastoral , or Damon To Sir William Trumbull

First in these Fields I try the Sylvan Strains, Nor blush to sport on Windsor's blissful Plains: Fair Thames flow gently from thy sacred Spring, While on thy Banks Sicilian Muses sing; Let Vernal Airs thro' trembling Osiers play, And Albion's Cliffs resound the Rural Lay. [■•■]

Soon as the Flocks shook off the nightly Dews, Two Swains, whom Love kept wakeful, and the Muse, Pour'd o'er the whitening Vale their fleecy Care, Fresh as the Morn, and as the Season fair: The Dawn now blushing on the Mountain's Side, Thus Daphnis spoke, and Strephon thus reply'd.

DAPHNIS

Hear how the Birds, on ev'ry blooming Spray, With joyous Musick wake the dawning Day! Why sit we mute, when early Linnets sing, [...]

STREPHON

Sing then, and Damon shall attend the Strain, While yon slow Oxen turn the furrow'd Plain. [...] [continues till line 102]

Example 4: William Wordsworth, 'The Daffodils" (1807, Allison et al., eds. 1983: 556f.)

I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; [...]

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62 Werner Wolf

Example 5: Christina Rossetti, "Song" (1848, Allison et al., eds. 1983: 817)

Song

When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me;

Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress tree:

Be the green grass above me With showers and dewdrops wet;

And if thou wilt, remember,

And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows, I shall not feel the rain;

I shall not hear the nightingale Sing on, as if in pain:

And dreaming through the twilight That doth not rise nor set,

Haply I may remember, And haply may forget.

Example 6: Anonymous, 'The Wild Colonial Boy" (probably 1 860s, Davis, ed. 1 984/2000: 16)

The Wild Colonial Boy

Tis of a wild Colonial boy, Jack Doolan was his name Of poor but honest parents he was borne in Castlemain. He was his father's only hope, his mother's only joy, And dearly did his parents love the wild Colonial boy.

Chorus : Come, all my hearties, we'll roam the mountains high, Together we will plunder, together we will die. We'll wander over valleys, and gallop over plains, And we'll scorn to live in slavery, bound down with iron chains. He was scarcely sixteen years of age when he left his father's And through Australia's sunny clime a bushranger did roam. He robbed those wealthy squatters, their stock he did destroy, And a terror of Australia was the wild Colonial boy.

[...i [continues for another five stanzas]

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The Lyric - an Elusive Genre 63

Example 7: Ezra Pound, "T'sai Chi'h" (1916, Allison et al., eds. 1983: 963)

T'sai Chi'h

The petals fall in the fountain, the orange-colored rose-leaves,

Their ochre clinging to the stone.

Example 8: e.e. cummings, "l(a" (1958, Allison et al., eds. 1983: 1047)

l(a

l(a

le

af

fa

II

s) one

I

iness

Example 9: Seamus Heaney, "Incertus" (1972, Heaney 1990: 48)

Incertus

I went disguised in it, pronouncing it with a soft church-Latin c, tagging it under my efforts like a damp fuse. Uncertain. A shy soul fretting and all that. Expert obeisance.

Oh yes, I crept before I walked. The old pseudonym lies there like a mouldering tegument.

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64 Werner Wolf

Example 10: Les Murray, 'The Statistics of Good" (Murray 2002: 6)

The Statistics of Good

Chaplain General (RC) Archbishop Mannix of Melbourne, he who had a bog-oak footstool so his slipper might touch Irish soil first, when alighting from his carriage

saved, while a titular Major-General in the Australian Army, perhaps half the fit men of a generation from the shrapnelled sewer landscapes of Flanders by twice winning close referenda against their conscription.

How many men? Half a million? Who knows? Goodness counts each and theirs. Politics and Death chase the numbers.

If one asked: what is the common denominator amongst these ten (extracts of) texts, the answer would presumably be: most, or perhaps all of them are poems. In fact, even though individual scholars may hesitate with the appli- cation of this label in some cases, there is arguably not a single text among these examples on which everyone would agree that it is definitely not a poem. This thesis has in fact been confirmed by the outcome of a small empirical survey which I carried out, in November 2002, among three groups of 3rd- to 5,h-year students at the University of Graz (totalling 26 responses)2. Many scholars would probably even say that all of these texts belong to what they are used to regarding - and to teaching - as one literary genre, namely the lyric as opposed to drama and to narrative fiction. Of course, one immedi- ately sees the problem, raised by viewing this collection of examples in this way, a problem which was also highlighted by the remarkably divergent reactions of the students to some texts (notably to nos. 6 to 9)3: how can one group together such heterogeneous texts in one genre? This leads to the question on which this essay will focus: can the lyric be defined in the same way as drama or narrative fiction, or to put it more bluntly: can the lyric be defined at all?

Scholars have reacted differently to this problem. There is one group, the 'nominalists', who regard the lyric as a mere umbrella term that emerged after a long history of inclusions of ever more texts in it which do not have

2 For more details, see below. 3 For the exact results see below, notes 41 and 42.

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The Lyric - an Elusive Genre 65

anything in common that would permit a sound generic definition. One of the proponents of this nominalism is, for instance, Andreas Mahler, who starts his entry on the lyric in a recently published literary manual with the apodictic sentence: "Lyrik ist nicht allgemein definierbar" (2002: 655) - 'the lyric cannot generally be defined'4.

There is, however, a second group, the 'realists', who apparently believe that the generic designation 'lyric' corresponds to some textual or other reality. They have consequently struggled to describe at least some features that characterize the lyric beyond a mere common name. One of these 'real- ists' is Walter Bernhart: in a noteworthy essay entitled "Überlegungen zur Lyriktheorie aus erzähltheoretischer Sicht" (1 993) he carried out an extensive inquiry into the possibilities of defining the lyric in contrast to narrative fiction. His main contention, as summarized in the English abstract of the essay, is the following:

[. . .] a lyrical work presents an absolute (vs. a contextualized) utterance where the primary motivation for the utterance lies in the manifestation of the mental attitude taken by the shaping force, or source, of the utterance (vs. the mi- metic construction of a coherent fictional world, i.e. an emphasis on the content of the utterance [in fiction]). (1993: 359)

Bernhart is conscious of the fact that this is not the only criterion which might be used to describe the lyric, and this is why he attempts to show that his finding harmonizes with further features of the lyric emphasized by other theoreticians (see p. 372f.). However, a rest of self-doubt seems to emerge in the conclusion of Bemhart's essay, where he says:

Damit scheint das goldene Zeitalter der unschuldigen Wahrheiten wieder angebrochen, das in epischen Texten eben Erzählungen und in der Lyrik eben kürzere Texte, die Einblick in ein Bewußtsein gewähren, erkennt. (1 993: 375; emphasis mine) [With this the Golden Age of innocent truth seems to have dawned once again, in which epic texts are simply identified with narratives and lyric poetry with shorter texts that permit insight lyric poetry with shorter texts that permit insight into a consciousness. (My translation)]

Bernhart here implies, of course, that in reality the era of 'innocent', simple truths has long passed, at least in the generic discussion of the perhaps most elusive literary genre, the lyric. Yet, he has opened a road that goes beyond previous attempts to define the lyric, and with his final, as I take it, ironic twist he also implies that further inquiry is necessary. In my ensuing remarks I will

4 Cf. also Warning 1 997: 1 7: "Es gibt keine Theorie der Lyrik oder des Lyrischen [sie] so wie es eine Theorie des Dramatischen oder des Erzählerischen gibt." (There is no theory of poetry or of the lyric in the sense in which there is a theory of drama or of narrative fiction.'). For a brief historical survey of the diffidence towards definitions of the lyric see Lamping 1989/1993: 9f.

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66 Werner Wolf

do precisely this, since, like Bernhart, I do not think that an attempt at de- scribing the lyric is futile: after all, we as literary scholars teach lyric poetry as a distinct genre, and so we should also make efforts to clarify this concept as far as that is possible. Moreover, most recipients can recognize texts as poems when they see or hear one, so there ought to be a way to account for this ability. Preferably, this should be a way that goes beyond the mere appeal to "the authority of interpretive communities", which Stanley Fish emphasized in the subtitle of his book Is There a Text in this Class? (1980/ 1994), namely by explaining - and, if necessary, relativizing - this authority in the first place. Yet, any such attempt presupposes that we take the ques- tion seriously as to why the lyric is such a notoriously elusive genre and obviously so difficult to define. This is what I intend to do in the following as a preliminary to proposing a reconceptualization of this genre, although I am well aware of the merely provisional status of such a proposal.

2. Reasons for the difficulties in defining the lyric: the criteria of the lyric proposed in research and their precarious nature

One reason for the elusiveness of the lyric resides in the history of the term (see Johnson 1993: 71 3f.; Fricke/Stocker 2000: 499-500; Burdorf 2000: 506-508). However, there is not enough space here to recall it in full. We are only concerned with the outcomes of this history: namely with the fact that, today, the terms 'poem', 'poetry', and 'lyric' have to a large extent become interchangeable in their application to certain texts5 (accordingly, in the following, no differentiation will be made between these terms). Understand- ably, the heterogeneity of the texts thus designated creates enormous prob- lems for the attempts that have been made at establishing systematic criteria for the lyric.

This becomes painfully evident in a short review of the main characteris- tics of the lyric that have been proposed in research.6 There are only two basic features that are unproblematic, since they constitute the common ground in which the lyric is embedded and where it is supposed to occupy a particular domain (notably as opposed to drama and narrative fiction), namely that a poem is a literary verbal text and that it is fictional. Problems

5 Cf. also Burdorf 1995: 20: "[...] es [ist] sinnvoll [...], die Begriffe 'Lyrik', und 'lyrisch' - dem heutigen ailtagssprachlichen Gebrauch entsprechend - nicht vom Begriff 'Gedicht' zu trennen. [...] Lyrik ist die literarische Gattung, die alle Gedichte umfaßt." ('[...] it makes sense to follow contemporary everyday usage in not distinguishing the terms »the lyric« and »lyric(al)« from »poem«. [...] the lyric is the genre which comprises all poems.').

6 In the following I draw on a wide range of generic assessments of poetry, which range from Werlich 1967/1979 to Müller-Zettelmann 2002.

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The Lyric - an Elusive Genre 67

occur as soon as one tries to go into further detail, as can be seen in the following summary of the pros and cons of nine alleged traits of this genre:

1 . "A poem is a composition written for performance by the human voice" - this opening sentence of Jon Stallworthy's essay on "Versification" in the Norton Anthology of Poetry (1983: 1403) points to a first characteristic that has frequently been mentioned: the quality of the lyric as a potentially oral and thus performative genre7. In contradistinction to drama, which is usually also destined for public performance, some theorists specify that this performativity does not entail dramatic role-playing or acting, but only resides in the speech act of the reciter (cf. Burdorf 1995: 21; Schlaffer 1995: esp. p. 48).

While this seems to be plausible in view of the origins of poetry and song-like texts (such as examples nos. 1 , 5 and 6), and also today, per- haps, with reference to public recitals of poetry, this criterion is question- able in an age in which most poems are read rather than recited. It is obviously also inappropriate for visual poetry as well as for all kinds of poems that actually imply role-playing, such as the Rollengedicht or the dramatic monologue. Moreover, Eva Müller-Zettelmann has argued convincingly that the entire distinction 'oral vs. written' is irrelevant when- ever poetry produces the effect of a 'mimesis of consciousness', for in either case the imitation of thought presupposes the acceptance of a convention (cf. 2002: 147f.).

2. The second feature that is often adduced is the alleged shortness of the lyric, a trait that has equally been emphasized by Bernhart (see 1993: 374; cf. also Nünning/Nünning 2001: 47). One should also add some consequences of this trait: the memorability of poetry, the 'compression of meaning' frequently attributed to it, and the lyric 'world-making' through minimal units, allusion and inference rather than through detailed, explicit constructions of a fictional universe. Part of the wide-spread feeling that the lyric is a particularly 'difficult' genre also derives from this criterion of brevity and its consequences.

However, there are again pertinent objections: on the one hand short- ness and 'compressed meaning' are not exclusive traits of the lyric, but also features, for example, of the short story; whilst on the other hand there is such a thing as a 'long poem'. Generally, brevity is a very relative and problematic criterion (cf. Lamping 1989/1993: 87), since there is no way of indicating any precise borderline between 'long' and 'short'8.

7 Cf. also Lamping's insistence on the lyric being an "Einzelredď (1 989/1 993: 63; emphasis mine), 'a monological utterance (by a single speaker)'.

8 Consequently, Fricke/Stocker 2000: 500 apodictically state: "'Kürze ist kein Merkmal der Lyrik.'" ('brevity is not a characteristic trait of the lyric'.).

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68 Werner Wolf

3. A third alleged trait of the lyric appears to be less problematic: the frequently-mentioned quality of lyric language to generally deviate from everyday language and discursive conventions in a particularly salient way, so that extra meaning is created and the reception process is slowed down, in part owing to the difficulties presented by the text. This deviation appears, for instance, on the syntactic and semantic levels, in poetic rhetoricity and the extensive employment of imagery. It is related to the alleged special literariness of poetry9, and also to the particular aesthetic value which has been attached to the lyric by so many poets and recipients over the centuries. Lyric deviation has variously been specified, for example as the lyric being an 'anti-discourse' ("Lyrik ist wesentlich Anti-Diskurs" [Stierle 1 979: 514]), or as its 'heightened artifici- ality' (see Nünning/Nünning 2001 : 47) and structural overdetermination ("Überstrukturierung" [Müller-Zettelmann 2000: ch. 3.2.2]). With a view to one of its effects this deviation may alternatively be described as the ability of the lyric to maximally semanticize all possible elements and usages of language. As a consequence of this potential 'overkill of meaningfulness', lyric texts are particularly prone to a proliferation of different meanings and thus to ambiguity (cf. Bode 2001 : 19). However, once again, this feature does not appear to be totally con-

vincing as such, since it is not restricted to the lyric but is shared, to some extent, by other literary forms. The very fact that, owing to an unusual but meaningful departure from everyday language, the lyric can be used as a paradigm of literariness indicates that there is at best a difference in degree between the lyric and other literary genres. As with the criterion of brevity, no one can say for sure from what degree onwards such devia- tions are specifically lyric.

4. Meaningful deviation appears to be more specifically lyric if applied to the acoustic level of the text and its consequences for the layout of poems: this points to a fourth alleged criterion: to versification and, more gener- ally, to the foregrounding of the acoustic potentials of the verbal signifiers used. Rhythmical or metrical use of language in verses, which occurs even in simple popular lyrics, is perhaps the criterion most fre- quently and emphatically mentioned in research10. It dovetails with the

9 Meaningful deviation from ordinary, everyday language use, as exemplified in poetry, has served structuralist theoreticians in particular for discussing literariness as a whole, which has indeed been defined through deviation and foregrounding (cf., e.g., Leech 1 969, whose aim was to contribute to "the analysis of the characteristic features of literary language" [3]).

1 0 Cf. Lamping's formula for the lyric as an "Einzelrede in Verseď (1 989/1 993: 63; emphasis mine): a 'monological versified utterance'; cf. also Burdorf 1995: 15, moreover the neurophysiological underpinning of verse-structure by Tumer/Pöppel 1989/1999 and the uses of these findings by Bernhart 1995a.

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The Lyric - an Elusive Genre 69

equally wide-spread idea of the inherent 'musicality' of the lyric (cf. Bernhart 1993: 374), which is also one of the most widely recognized traits of poetry and whose relevance is preserved in the very etymology of the term by its reference to a musical instrument. In oral performances of poetry, versification implies acoustic patterns within a verse and pauses dividing the lines; in written poetry, it manifests itself in what may be called 'visual versification': in the typical layout of poems with justified left margins and - where applicable - in the structuring of the text into stanzas.

However, acoustic effects such as alliteration and rhythm also occur in non-lyric prose texts, and versification (both visual and acoustic) is gener- ally not restricted to the lyric, but can also be found in the verse epic and in verse drama. On the other hand, the introduction of 'free verse' by Klopstock in the 1750s and the rise of the 'prose poem' undermine the validity of versification as the hallmark of the lyric11.

5. Meaningful deviation from everyday language has a further facet which theoreticians (cf. Bernhart 1993: 373; Müller-Zettelmann 2000: ch. 3.2.3.; Hühn 1995: 12, and 1998) have also mentioned as a feature of the lyric, namely heightened self-referentiality (salient recurrences on whatever textual level) and self-reflexivity (which makes the recipient reflect on textuality). Self-referential elements are indeed common in poetry, owing, e.g., to metric and semantic recurrences, and as for self-reflexivity, it could indeed be argued that there is a connection between the lyric being the most 'artificial' of literary genres and the frequent laying bare of this artificiality through meta-poetical elements.

Yet again, these lyric traits become questionable, if one considers, for example, postmodernist experimental fiction, for which the same traits are generally claimed to be typical. Apart from that, the lyric here again only displays a feature of literature in general, and thus a problem re-merges that is unsolvable in a 'digital', binary framework that allows either the inclusion or exclusion of a text: the problem of determining a specific degree as an index of lyricalness.

6. As for the content of poems, i.e. their level of the 'enounced', as opposed to the previous features that mainly referred to lyric 'enunciation'12, the following traits have been mentioned in research: for anyone who surveys

11 It is, therefore, understandable that Bernhart 1993: 374 only speaks of versification as 'conducive to lyricalness' ("lyrikfördernd") and that Warning (1979: 20f.) in a more radical gesture, completely jettisons versification as a merely formal criterion, if unaccompanied by a semantic correlative (which he does not see).

1 2 For the differentiation between 'enounced' and 'enunciation', which was coined by Easthope (cf. 1983: 40-47), see Hühn 1995: 13.

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70 Werner Wolf

generic research on the lyric, what comes to mind first here is the alleged existence of a seemingly unmediated consciousness or agency, perhaps even of a 'persona', who is often addressed as the 'lyric I' and is said to constitute the centre of the lyric utterance and of the experience discursivized by it. This discursive agency or voice is often referred to as 'unmediated', in contrast to narrative characters, who are mediated through narrators (see, e.g., Bode 2001 : 163), and this impression of the immediate presence of a (human or anthropomorphic) consciousness and of gaining access to it through the text can be linked to the possibility of a rudimentary aesthetic illusion triggered by lyric poetry (cf. Wolf 1998; Müller-Zettelmann 2000: ch. 3.2.6, and 2002: 143-49). Moreover, the lyric 'persona' or consciousness is conceived of as being responsible for what Dieter Lamping, in one of the most influential German discussions of the lyric, has called the 'monologicity' ("Monologcharakter" [1989/1993: 69]) of the lyric: the fact that the text of a poem resembles a monologue, since it is uttered and controlled by one consciousness and thus is an "Einzelrede" (63), a discourse attributable to a single speaker; this pre- cludes normative dialogicity: a juxtaposition of several value systems and attitudes, as frequently encountered in novels and in drama.

Unfortunately, this lyric 'persona', which appears to belong to the core of lyricalness, is anything but an uncontested phenomenon. It does not have a major relevance, for instance, for ballads (such as 'The Wild Colonial Boy" [example no. 6]) and similar narrative poems, which in addition are as mediated and as story-centred as narrative fiction13. As for the alleged monologicity, if taken in a verbatim (not necessarily Bakhtinian) sense, it is easy to show that many poems contain dialogues which sometimes, as in Pope's Pastorals (example no. 3), defy the con- struction of a unifying consciousness as their transmitter; in addition, long poems such as Tennyson's In Memoriam can also present a conscious- ness which seems to be split into two positions and thus appears to carry on a dialogue with itself. Conversely, there are also examples in the field of drama (in particular monodrama) where Lamping's qualification of the lyric as "Einzelrede" seems to fit, such as Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape or Botho Strauß' Der Kontrabaß.

Moreover, it has been pointed out that even apart from ballads there are many poems that do not contain an overt speaker who appears in the first person (see, for instance, examples nos. 7 and 8). Wolfgang G. Müller (1 979: 56), therefore, had to admit that the 'lyric I' is not a constitu- ent generic feature of the lyric ("ist nicht gattungskonstitutiv für die LyriK') . Bernhart (1993) and Müller, in a later essay (1995), have tried to repair

1 3 For an extended discussion of mediated poetry, cf. Müller-Zettelmann 2002: 238-241 .

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The Lyric - an Elusive Genre 71

this systematic problem by introducing, for these cases, a covert, 'deper- sonalized agency' (see Bernhart 1993: 366) or a persona displaying an 'implicit subjectivity' (see Müller 1995: 95): a text origin that can only be inferred and is not expressed by a first person pronoun14. If one uses the label 'covert', this recalls an analogous terminology in narratology, where it designates narrators whose presence is not palpable either. Where such covert narrators occur, the characters often seem to be unmediated and to speak in their own voices. If that is so, if, consequently, the alleg- edly distinctive agencies of the lyric and narrative fiction, namely the 'lyric persona' and the narrator, can be reduced and 'refined out of existence', a major distinction between the two genres becomes blurred. Moreover, if, in some cases, there are thus unmediated 'voices' in both genres, while in others mediated contents can occur on both sides, too, the generic specificity cannot lie here, but at best in the textual focus on, and the functions of, these voices: whereas in fiction, the narrator's main function can be said to consist in transmitting the essential of the text, namely a story, in the lyric there are only a few 'narrative' forms (such as the ballad) for which the same can be claimed. As a rule, however, - as Bernhart (cf. 1 993) emphasizes - the focus is here on the speaker's utterance, and this utterance is not a means of telling a past usually story, but 'the thing itself: the unfolding of speech or streams of consciousness in the present. This leads to the seventh alleged trait of poetry:

7. the emphasis on the individual perspective and/or the perception of the lyric agency rather than on perceived objects. This feature has most eloquently been described by Bernhart (cf. 1993) and seems to play an increasingly important role in lyric theory, as similar discussions by Dietmar Jaegle (cf. 1995), Peter Hühn (cf. 1998) and Müller-Zettelmann (cf. 2002: 142f.) indicate. This individual perspective is frequently speci- fied as being informed or triggered by emotions, and the expression of feelings has even been emphasized as being 'a domain reserved to the lyric' (Müller-Zettelmann 2002: 1 30). The merit of this conceptualization is that it allows us to avoid the controversial criterion of lyric subjectivity, although this version of 'perspectivity' - notably under the influence of Romantic poetry as epitomized by example no. 4 - belongs to the most popular criteria used for defining the lyric both in introductory and more in- depth studies (cf. Nünning/Jucker 1999: 67; Iser 1979; Cuddon, J.A., ed. 1998/99: 481).

14 The discussion about different forms of lyric subjectivity (treated by me also in the context of the ensuing feature no. 7) somewhat obscured the fact that a dichotomy of "explicitly labelled or only implied" speaker roles can already be found in Werlich 1967/1979: 14.

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72 Werner Wolf

As is to be expected, this trait is not without its problems either. There are in fact a number of poems which defy the criterion of the primary status of perspective or percephon and the secondary status of the 'perceived objects' or the represented 'world', poems that emphatically centre on external objects (for instance Dinggedichte as exemplified in text no. 7), as Müller-Zettelmann has pertinently pointed out (cf. 2000: 112). Moreover, the expression of emotions can hardly be restricted to the lyric, and all that may be said of lyric perspectivity in general could also be claimed, and with equal validity, at least for one kind of fiction: the mod- ernist stream-of-consciousness or interior-monologue novel or short story - provided it uses one consistent focalizer. Here, too, the perceptions and observations of a central consciousness are often much more important than the objects of these perceptions15. Thus, emotional perspectivity does not seem to be a valid feature for a neat distinction between poetry and narrative fiction either.

8. A much more promising option seems to be a further alleged trait of the lyric which refers to the differentiation between this genre and narrative on the basis of chronologically ordered eventfulness. Arguably, the preoccu- pation with a state of consciousness that has often been attributed to the lyric precludes the discursivation of dynamic sequences of events: hence the relative unimportance or even frequent lack of (a series of) external actions that would form a narrative development through chro- nology, causality and teleology (cf. Nünning/Nünning 2001 : 47; Schlaffer 1995: 54; Wiemann 1996/1997: 53)16 and would, in addition, create a typical narrative effect: suspense (cf. Müller-Zettelmann 2002: 133)17.

However, this criterion is in turn not unproblematic: on the one hand one could again mention the parallel with modernist storytelling, in which there is frequently not much external action either and in which some-

15 This display of processes of perception in which many poems resemble, for instance, stories by Virginia Woolf, enables the reader not only to experience feelings, perceptions, etc. with the focalizer-like lyric 'persona' and thus to imagine him- or herself being in the presence of a consciousness (which would be conducive to the aforementioned aesthetic illusion), but also to observe - from some distance - how the 'persona' observes £nd how these observations are discursivized (cf. for this "second-order observation" Hühn 1998: 224; however, it is again not only applicable to poetry, but equally to narrative texts using focalizers).

1 6 Fludemik 1 996: 355 even extends this trait to "poetry's typical lack of experientiality", which, however, is questionable, as not all experience need be linked to external action. For the meaning of narrative development as typical of narrativity see Wolf 2002 and 2003a.

1 7 According to Volker Wiemann (see 1 996/1 997: 54), the non-narrativity of the lyric can also be seen in the fact that poems cannot be transferred into other narrative media such as film or comics. With a view to the characteristic use of language in the lyric one might even radicalize this contention and claim that among all kinds of literature lyric texts are the most problematic to be transposed into any other medium.

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The Lyric - an Elusive Genre 73

times the impression prevails that 'nothing really happens'; and on the other hand there are poetic genres such as the ballad or the fable which can certainly not be said to lack either external action or narrative devel- opment.

9. The last feature of the lyric that has repeatedly been mentioned in re- search is a further consequence of the alleged focus of the lyric on con- sciousness as well as of lyric self-referentiality: it is the contention that lyric utterances are dereferentialized, 'absolute' utterances (Lamping 1989/1993: 63 calls this "absolute Rede" ['absolute utterance']). This absoluteness means a lack of (pragmatic) references to a specific, clearly identifiable reality (see Link 1992: 91, who speaks of 'free-floating' lyric images), and it also implies the fact, related to the 'world-making' through minimal units mentioned above in feature no. 2, that in poems virtually all the constituents of a communicative situation can remain in an unspeci- fied state (cf. also Bernhart 1993: 371; Müller 1995: 99; Fludernik 1996: 312). As a consequence, the utterance made in such 'absolute' texts appears to be applicable in a fairly general way and may be felt to have a relatively wide relevance, as it enables the recipients to project their own ideas and experiences onto the text to a particularly great extent (in addition to 'brevity' and 'deviation', this 'absoluteness' is, however, also responsible for the feeling that the lyric is the most demanding genre, as so much has to be invested by the recipients).

To this one could object that, first, a lack of 'realistic' referentiality can again be found in literature in general, since fictional literature is a non- pragmatic kind of discourse. One could furthermore argue that even a rather advanced degree of absoluteness, indefiniteness and dereferentialization is not an exclusive trait of the lyric, but can be found, for instance, in some of Beckett's prose texts, too, and in some respects (e.g. in the unspecified temporal setting) even in fairy tales. Conversely, there are poems, especially in the field of Romantic poems of personal experience ( Erlebnislyrik ), such as Wordsworth's 'Tintem Abbey", which suggest a 'realistic' reference, in this case a topographical and auto- biographical one. Nor should it be forgotten that the alleged absoluteness of the lyric has also vigorously been contested from another point of view: namely with the argument that there is no such thing as a discourse existing in the void and that it is the critic or reader who disregards or supplies, e.g., cultural, ethnic or gender references in poetry (cf. Perloff 1998).

So what is the consequence of this survey of alleged criteria of the lyric? Obviously that, apart from textuality and fictionality, there is not a single criterion to be found that fits all texts which could be - and are in fact -

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74 Werner Wolf

called 'poems' and that consequently all of these criteria are precarious. This is even true of Lamping's influential formula of the lyric as a 'monological versified utterance' (" Einzelrede in Verseď [1989/1993: 63]) and regrettably also of Bernhart's insistence on the "absolute utterance [of a] mental attitude" (1 993: 359) as a unifying criterion. Any attempt to define the lyric on the basis of essential criteria thus appears to be doomed to lead into an impasse.

3. A proposal for a reconceptualization of the lyric

3.1 Previous approaches to the lyric

However, it may well be that it is not the criteria per se that have led genre theory of the lyric into an impasse, but the approach to the lyric adopted so far and the use made of these criteria. Up to now, most approaches in this field have been characterized by the fact that they are exclusively text-cen- tred and a-historical, that they tend to be normative, and that they are based on the conception of the lyric as a fixed essence which can be defined by one or by very few necessary features. This view has led to the privileging, for instance, of versification or of subjectivity as defining and essential quali- ties of the lyric, thus excluding prose poems or ballads (as does, e.g., Lam- ping [see 1 989/1 993: 36 and 89]). It goes without saying that other traits and, generally, the plurality of possible features of the lyric tend thus to be disre- garded18. Yet, after what has been said, it should be clear that any normative approach which, in addition to the indeed necessary requirement that a poem be a fictional literary text, singles out individual features of the above cata- logue as necessary conditions of the lyric, would be problematic and would be unsuitable in view of the apparent flexibility of the genre. It would, however, be unfair to previous research not to mention some

more promising approaches. Among these Alastair Fowler's (1982) concep- tion of literary genres, not as neatly defined systematic classes, but as groups of texts constituted by a Wittgensteinian 'family resemblance', is of particular relevance and has successfully been adopted by Müller-Zettel- mann (2000) in her reconceptualization of the lyric. She discusses the lyric using a so-called 'pluri-componential model' ("Mehrkomponentenmodell" [2000: 15ff.]). While acknowledging, like myself and others, the impossibility

18 Moreover, the combination of a-historicity and normativity has sometimes resulted in a definition of the lyric modelled on particular forms, such as the subjective Erlebnislyrik (poetry of personal experience) of Romanticism, whose historical limitations and hence relativity were not sufficiently taken into account. Even though in more recent conceptualiza- tions of the lyric, the model of the Romantic poem of subjective experience has been abandoned, the basic feature of the approach, namely the privileging of a small set of defining qualities, has nevertheless been maintained (e.g. by Lamping 1989/1993 and Bernhart 1 993).

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The Lyric - an Elusive Genre 75

of a watertight, systematic definition of the lyric (cf. p. 17)19, she uses this approach at least for a description of this genre by means of a plurality of characteristic and frequently observed tendencies, without privileging any of them as a sine qua non (cf. p. 18). As a consequence, she manages to conceptualize the lyric in a much more flexible way than has previously been done20.

3.2 A cognitive and prototypical approach to the lyric

Genres such as the lyric (but to a certain extent this also applies, e.g., to 'the narrative' as a basic form of representation) are in fact not fixed essences that are defined by a finite number of inalienable textual traits, but flexible communicative devices that are located in the minds of both authors and

recipients and enable them (in most cases) to encode and decode the ge- neric affiliation of individual texts correctly. Thus, before a poem is written or read, poets and readers already possess a notion of 'poeticalness' or 'lyrical- ness'21 as part of their cultural competence. The fact that genres are notions stored in the minds of authors and recipients, meta-concepts that contribute to a successful communication and reception of literary utterances, allows us to regard them as cognitive schémas or frames (as there is no need for a differentiation in my argument I will not distinguish between these terms)22.

Moreover, the pluri-componential nature of generic frames and the con- siderable variability of texts that are felt to belong to a particular genre make it advisable that literary genres are conceived of as prototypes, as Fowler has done23. A prototype is characterized by a number of features that are

19 Elsewhere, however, she speaks inadvertently of an "Erstellung einer Definition der Lyrik" ('devising a definition of the lyric' [Müller-Zettelmann 2000: 63]).

20 However, in spite of mentioning the expertise of informed recipients (cf. 2000: 16), Müller- Zettelmann describes the lyric basically from an a-historical and exclusively text-centred angle. Moreover, although the notion of family-resemblance' as part of her 'multi- componential approach' implies a prototypical procedure, she has not really exploited this facet of her conceptualization, e.g. by indicating historical prototypes of the lyric. Neverthe- less, her approach seems to me the best that has hitherto been proposed; it is indeed a very helpful lead out of the impasse of previous generic definitions of the lyric. What is also helpful is her emphasis on the fact that one of the tasks of generic theory is to describe the communicative competence of writers and recipients in using certain literary forms (cf. ibid.).

21 Cf. Bode's insistence on the fact that no reception is without pre-conceptions (cf. 2001 : 1 3). 22 For a more detailed discussion of the possibilities of differentiating between 'schema',

'frames' and 'scripts' see Semino 1997: ch. 6, who, however, is well aware of the inconsis- tent use of these terms in cognitive theory (cf. p. 128).

23 For an application of prototype theory to narrative verbal texts and other media see Wolf 2002 and 2003a. It should be noted that the idea of describing literary genres through prototypes can already be found in Goethe's Noten und Abhandlungen zum Westöstlichen Divan (1819). In a famous passage he not only distinguishes the epic, the lyric and the drama from each other as 'natural forms of poesy' ("Naturformen der Poesie"), but also tries to cope with the 'infinite variety of genres' ("die Dichtarten [sind] bis ins Unendliche

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76 Werner Wolf

mentally stored and are then used as standards for the identification of phenomena which are felt to be similar, but may turn out to correspond to these standards to various degrees. These features, however, are not fixed and in each case necessary defining qualities, but characteristic tendencies. This means in practice that they should be relevant to more than 50% of all the texts that are, for instance, classified as lyric or, alternatively, that they should be thought to be so by the majority of recipients24. As a consequence, these tendencies need not all be present or clearly discernible whenever an experience or perception is linked to a prototype: although their characteriz- ing and identifying potential increases in proportion to the quantity of their occurrence as well as to the quality of their identifiability and importance, there is a considerable tolerance as to their numeric configuration and the ease with which they can be discerned. Objects or situations to which the same prototype frame can be applied, therefore, need not be identical in all details, but only display what has already been referred to as a 'family resemblance'. What kind of frame is best applied in a concrete situation emerges from a trial and error process, which in turn is triggered by certain frame markers or 'framings'. This cognitive, prototypical approach does not invalidate the lyric features

discussed above, but rather aims at using them within a more flexible frame- work. This framework leads admittedly to 'fuzzier' results than a systematic definition that determines "category membership as a digital [...] phenome- non" (Rosch/Mervin 1 975: 573) and thus permits clear inclusions or exclu- sions. In contrast to this, a prototype frame allows, among other things, for some historical variation, and, above all, avoids the aporetic situation which any 'digital' definition of the elusive category of the lyric through a finite number of necessary traits runs into: it permits a gradation of the lyric as a category that can be fulfilled more or less, that admits more or less typical cases, without having to exclude the less typical ones from the field of the lyric. Thus it is a particularly good tool for describing the experimentalism of some twentieth-century poets, such as e.e. cummings (cf. example 8) and authors of 'found poetry', within the very genre whose boundaries they tried to explore and expand. However, the approach, as proposed here, also implies some problems:

mannigfaltig") and the bewildering fact that the lyric can participate both in the dramatic and the narrative. He does so by proposing a typological circle in which prototypes ("Musterstücke") occupy the centre of each of the segments representing the three 'main elements' of his generic system: "Man wird sich [...] dadurch helfen, daß man die drei Hauptelemente in einem Kreis gegen einander über stellt und sich Musterstücke sucht, wo jedes Element einzeln obwaltet." (1819/1988: 187f.)

24 This twofold definition of prototypical tendencies cannot be avoided, as the cognitive nature of prototypes requires that both objects and recipients be taken into account.

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The Lyric - an Elusive Genre Tf

a. As with any prototypical, pluri-componential conceptualization, one diffi- culty is the question of whether all the features that can be identified in the prototype have the same importance for its cognitive use.

b. A second, equally general problem of any prototypical approach is the question of where to set the boundary beyond which an identification in terms of the prototype is no longer possible or does not make sense.

c. Finally, there is an even more essential problem: if one regards the lyric in terms of a prototype, but also speaks of its historical variability, the question emerges how to combine these two facets and how to describe the prototype in the first place.

As for this last problem, conceiving of the lyric as a prototype means indeed that one must give details of what a prototypical poem looks like. Of course, prototypes are mental constructs that emerge from a plurality of experiences that are felt to be similar, and thus there is no necessity for any actual poem to fully embody the prototype. Yet, it should be possible to indicate relevant components of this prototype. Previous research has, in my opinion, the merit of furnishing these features: they are precisely the aforementioned nine traits, provided they are regarded as tendencies25, since all of them are derived, as prototypical traits generally are, from a vast body of evidence and seem to be present in the minds of informed readers (albeit to various degrees and in connection with various terms).

This is at least the outcome of the empirical survey mentioned in the introduction to this essay. In order not to bias the survey too much (whose value is limited anyway, owing to the small number of participants, the fact that historical concepts of the lyric cannot be tested by this empirical method, and the circumstance that some students apparently knew some texts al- ready and had also some knowledge of genre theory) the groups chosen were classes that did not have a particular focus on poetry nor on the theory of the lyric. The students were asked to take a look at the ten texts repro- duced at the beginning of this essay (which were, however, xeroxed without indication of authors) and find criteria that would justify their opinion as to whether these texts were lyric texts or not. Some students apparently were unable or unwilling to give criteria (although most of them did the classifica- tion task according to given categories26). Yet, the result seems to be never-

25 If one considers these features as tendencies, the problem of quantification which occurs for instance in traits nos. 2, 3 and 5 loses its edge, since the higher the degree of fulfilment of the respective trait the more 'lyric' the text becomes in this detail.

26 Two groups (yielding 18 responses) were asked to choose among the answers 'yes* no, don't know'; one group (8 students) was given the possibility of choosing among 5 grades of lyricalness from 'definitely lyric' to 'definitely not lyric'. For the results see below, notes 41 and 42.

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78 Werner Wolf

theless noteworthy in our context, as all of the nine traits were mentioned several times, ranging from 3 utterances that can be related to trait no. 9 ('absoluteness') to 104 mentionings of trait 4a ('visual versification')27. These features can be summarized, and their inclusion in a list of prototypical components of the lyric be justified (where necessary), as follows:

1 . potential orality and performativity without dramatic role-playing: in spite of the existence of poems that presuppose a written form, the lyric - not least owing to the importance of the acoustic reality of its signifiers - has retained more affinity to orality and performativity than narrative fiction; as for a distinction of the lyric from drama as a rivalling performative genre, the tendency of drama towards role-playing is so self-evident that the lyric's significantly lesser tendency in this direction, together with its at least relatively prominent orality, yields a sufficient difference for maintain- ing this feature as a prototypical trait of the lyric28;

2. shortness: with a view to the majority of poems this is an obvious prototypical trait;

3. general deviation from everyday language and discursive conven- tions resulting in a maximal semanticization of all textual elements: again this trait appears to be self-explanatory with reference to the major- ity of texts;

4. a) (visual) versification and b) general foregrounding of the acoustic potentials of language ('musicality') as interrelated special cases of deviation; considering the majority of poems it would hardly be possible to deny that this trait is in fact also widely typical of the lyric;

5. salient self-referentiality and self-reflexivity as another special case of deviation: while self-referentiality may seem obvious enough as a prototypical trait of most poems, self-reflexivity is perhaps not found in the majority of poems; however, the lyric appears to be the genre in which

27 Each of the students could give several criteria per text. The detailed results for the ten poems, arranged according to traits, are: no. 1 (oral performativity): 22 mentionings; no. 2 (shortness): 8 mentionings that can be interpreted as referring to shortness (mainly indica- tions of a small number of stanzas); no. 3 (general deviation): 33 mentionings; no. 4: 104 mentionings for visual versification and 78 mentionings for acoustic versification or acoustic foregrounding; no. 5 (self-referentiality/self-reflexivity): 17 mentionings; no. 6 (one unmedi- ated consciousness): 19 mentionings; no. 7 (emphasis on perspective and [emotionally tinged] perception ratherthan on perceived objects): 9 mentionings; no. 8 (unimportance of, or no narrative action): 13 mentionings; no. 9 ('absoluteness'): 3 mentionings.

28 One should also note that Müller-Zettelmann's claim (cf. 2002b: 1 47f.), see above (ch. 2.2), namely that the opposition 'oral vs. written' is irrelevant to lyric 'mimesis of consciousness', does not refer to the external frame of lyric texts and their enunciation, but to the suggestion of a voice or a writing character on the level of the enounced.

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The Lyric - an Elusive Genre 79

this feature has played a greater role throughout its history (and not merely in modernism or postmodernism) than either in drama or in narra- tive fiction, so that meta-poetic self-reflexivity can be said to possess at least a relative characteristic salience;

6. existence of one seemingly unmediated consciousness or agency as the centre of the lyric utterance or experience (creating the effect of 'monologicity' of lyric discourse): again, although in many cases this feature will not be applicable, it is arguably relevant for the majority of poems and thus fulfils the condition of a prototypical trait29;

7. (emotional) perspectivity (emphasis on the individual perception of the lyric agency rather than on perceived objects): this trait appears valid for the same reason as trait no. 6;

8. relative unimportance or even lack of external action and (suspense- ful) narrative development: again, in spite of examples to the contrary, this feature can be justified as prototypical of the lyric, in particular if it is opposed to both narrative fiction and drama, which both typically - and much more regularly than poetry - represent stories, albeit in different forms of transmission30;

9. 'absoluteness' of lyric utterances (dereferentialization): again, this trait appears to be valid, for its inclusion in the list only implies - as is the case with the other eight traits - that it is applicable to a majority of relevant texts.

Although the configurations vary, all of these features can be found - and in my survey were in fact empirically identified - in the examples 1 to 1 0 quoted above31. An approximate illustration of a prototypical poem would thus be a

29 This is even acknowledged by Müller-Zettelmann as one of the most outspoken critics of the criterion of lyric non-mediacy (cf. 2002: 1 41 ).

30 It is therefore terminologically misleading to speak of a 'level of histoire? or of an 'action' in lyric poetry in general, as Müller-Zettelmann does (cf. 2002: 136f.).

31 Some details of my following proposal to identify these traits in the ten texts may be debat- able (indicated by "?" - as opposed to bold type for, as I believe, particularly clear cases), and some students had divergent opinions in a few cases (this refers to 17 students who answered an additional questionnaire which focussed on the applicability ['yes', 'no', 'don't know'] of the criteria adduced in ch. 2 to each of the 10 texts); nevertheless, traits 1 to 9 would arguably be recognizable in the examples as follows: 1 (oral performativity): exs. 1 , 5, 6 (the majority of students regarded this trait as applica-

ble to texts 1 to 6 with a maximum who voted for text 5) 2 (shortness): exs. 1 , 2, 4-6, 7-8, 9-1 0 (this corresponds to the opinion of the majority

of students, except for no. 6, which a majority did not consider short; this drastically shows the relativity of this criterion, as discussed in chapter 2)

3. (general deviation): exs. 1-5, 6?, 7-9, 10? (most students did not think that this criterion applied to nos. 6, 9 and 10; however, see for ex. no. 9 below, chapter 4, and for ex. no. 10 note 36)

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80 Werner Wolf

text that possesses a maximum of these lyric traits and would ideally be identifiable as a poem by all recipients without hesitation. This would arguably be the case for Christina Rossetti's "Song" (example no. 5), a poem which is an example that shows all the aforementioned traits, including, to a certain extent, even no. 1, since the title at least suggests an oral performativity of the text. The lyric prototypicalness of this text, at least for contemporary recipients, was in fact confirmed by the participants in the survey32.

Within this main prototype historical variability could then be conceptual- ized, owing to the pluri-componential view of the lyric, as shifts in the configu- ration of the features that make up the main prototype, in part even as varia- tions within individual features (for example versification with or without rhyme). As a result, one could thus construct historical (and also sub-generic) secondary prototypes, as will be detailed below.

As for the problem of the relative importance of individual features of the prototype, I would like to introduce a differentiation of core traits and addi- tional or marginal traits, that is: traits that occur more or less frequently. It should, however, be emphasized, that in accordance with the prototypical approach here outlined, even the status of a core trait does not mean that it must always be present, but only that it can be identified in the majority of cases.

As the overwhelming majority of poems over the centuries suggests, at least one trait could be considered to be a core trait, even a transhistorical one, namely feature no. 4 (visual and/or acoustic versification in general). It is perhaps no coincidence that this feature was mentioned most frequently in my survey as a reason for classifying the given texts as poems. Other traits

4. (versification): exs. 1, 2-6, 7? (this also corresponds to the majority of students' opinions)

5. (self-referentiality/self-reflexivity): exs. 1-5, 8 (including, in particular, self-reflexivity, which is most conspicuous in ex. 4; this general assessment corresponds to the majority of students' opinions)

6. (one unmediated consciousness): exs. 1, 2, 4-5, 7?, 9, 10? (the majority of students did, however, not consider this trait applicable to examples nos. 7 and 1 0, probably because these texts only have 'covert speakers')

7. (perspectivity and emphasis on [emotionally tinged] perception rather than on per- ceived objects): exs. 2, 4-5, 9 ('perspectivity' was also regarded as relevant to exs. 2, 4 and 5 by most students, however, only a strong minority voted for no. 9)

8. (unimportance of narrative action and development): exs. 1 , 2, 3?, 5, 7, 8, 9? (corre- sponds to the majority of students' opinions)

9. (absoluteness): exs. 1-3, 4?, 5, 7, 8, 9 (however, the majority of students were definite about the 'absoluteness' of nos. 4 and 5, but not of no. 9).

32 T ogether with Wordsworth's "Daffodils" (which, probably due to its being such a well-known text, received 100% of the votes "yes' or 'definitely a lyric texf) Rossetti's "Song" achieved the highest ratings as a lyric text among the ten examples (of 26 students 25 voted 'yes' or 'definitely a lyric texf, and only one 'probably a lyric text').

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The Lyric - an Elusive Genre 81

are historically more variable, but can nevertheless appear as core traits in some periods. This may for instance even apply, to some degree, to one potential detail of trait no. 4, namely the occurrence of rhyme (which in English literature was a core trait from the middle English period till the eighteenth century), and also to trait no. 1 (performativity): in pre-historical times and the early history of poetry actual performativity was no doubt of central importance (as can still be seen in example no. 1 )33, but today - apart from certain lyric sub-genres34 - this is no longer the case, at least if this trait is conceived of as designating an actual and not a merely potential performativity.

Furthermore, when talking of historical prototypes one should not only think in terms of individual traits, as has been the case so far, but in trait- configurations. This would mean that those features that regularly occur in certain periods could be called historically 'central' and thus appear to consti- tute the configuration of the respective secondary prototypes, while those that occur only occasionally would be viewed as historically marginal. The changes in poetic style - and the changing attitudes of the recipients to the lyric - could thus be conceived of as modulations in the numbers, configura- tions and realizations of typical traits, which, however, are all taken from the general reservoir of the nine traits discussed above.

The biggest problem is certainly the question of how to draw the limits of lyricalness in terms of prototypical family resemblance. Here no general, a- historical rule can be given, as the lyric apparently belongs to a class of prototypes in which no "category-wide attributes" (Ungerer/Schmid 1 996: 40), except for verbal textuality and literary fictionality, can be found. Apart from that, the prototypical approach, as applied to the lyric, admits only one clear case of exclusion, namely where none of the nine lyric features can be observed. However, this does not mean that nothing can be said about any meaningful limits of the lyric. Thus, owing to the relatively high number of lyric prototypical traits, it would be extremely improbable that a text should be identified as a poem which contained, for instance, only visual versification (in spite of the importance of this core trait). Fish's famous experiment (cf. 1 980/1 994: ch. 1 4 ["How to Recognize a Poem when You See One"]), which implied a misleading use of this marker, is not evidence to the contrary35: as

33 For the Renaissance "turning point in the history of poetry", which evolved "from an oral or spoken utterance to a printed object", see Bemhart 1995b: 441 .

34 Thus song-like, popular ballads, as illustrated with in example no. 5, have maintained a close connection to oral and even musical performativity.

35 Fish tried to show that generic classification depends exclusively on context factors: in the case of his experiment he had told his students that what actually was an arbitrary list of names was a "religious poem" (1980/1994: 323), an instruction that elicited an appropriate 'lyric' reading of the list. It is, however, questionable whether this reaction would have been the same, if the only lyric marker had been visual versification and not also the instruction

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82 Werner Wolf

different from texts such as example no. 10, whose poeticity rests on more than mere versification36,

a randomly chosen, banal or expository text (such as this one) that would be transformed into

a versified form (with justified left margins) may perhaps initially trigger a consideration of the frame lyric.

Yet, given that the employment of frames is a trial-and-error process and the lyric a multi-componential frame, the lack of most further typical traits of the lyric (including the meaningful and 'aesthetically valuable' deviation from 'ordinary language') would arguably lead either to the choice of a different frame (as in the 'pseudo-poem' above) or - with less probability - to a speci- fication of the original consideration by locating the text on the margins of lyricalness (a gradation which Fish had not provided for).

The gradability of the lyric in fact permits relatively clear statements about texts that, owing to a lack or a maximum of prototypical traits, can be placed at either end of a continuum ranging from zero to maximal lyricalness. How- ever, there is a considerable zone of transition between these poles, where the precise positioning of a text may always appear debatable and depends (or depended), above all, on

a. the heuristic intention of the recipient or critic and on the conformity of his or her idea of the lyric to the (historical) prototype(s) of the genre,

b. the historical and cultural situation and corresponding conventions in which a given text is (or was) embedded, and,

c. consequently, the existence and configuration of alternative prototypes and schémas.

Thus, sticking to versification and highlighting just one of these factors, namely the influence of historical conventions, it would be safe to say that before the nineteenth century a non-versified text, even if it displayed other features of the lyric, would hardly have been identified as 'poetry' in English literature. This may have been one of the reasons why James Macpherson,

(and classification) by someone whom the students must have considered to be an author- ity in the field.

36 In this example, which for many lines seems to be a mere prose text transformed into verse, the most lyrically dense and 'devianť lines are the last two lines which contain conspicuous oppositions ("Goodness" vs. "Politics and Death"; "counts" vs. "chase"), the rhetorical figure of personification ("Goodness", "Death", "Politics") and a figura etymological the play on "chase" ('pursue' and 'engrave'). One student therefore - and also because of the number of 1 4 lines - regarded this text even as a modern version of a sonnet.

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The Lyric - an Elusive Genre 83

speaking of his Fragments of Ancient Poetry (1 760), which from today's point of view could be termed early prose poems, emphasized in his "Preface" that these texts were 'in reality' prose translations of versified poems: so the historical convention of versification was at least 'indirectly' fulfilled and the term Fragments of Ancient Poetry justified.

3.3 The variability of lyric prototypes in literary history

It is easy to see that yet another problem emerges from what has been said, namely the identification - or construction - of the details of historical secondary prototypes. Literary history can here be of some help, especially if one takes into account that this history also comprises reception history. Thus, statements can be made about the respective 'centrality' of historical texts (their location near a historical prototype) or the innovativeness of a text (and thus the remoteness from a historical prototype, which may contribute to the forming of a new one).

It would be straying too far here to enter into a detailed discussion of historical prototypes of the lyric, and the entire approach is perhaps still so novel that it would be too early anyway to make any solid claims. Yet, it may not be too soon to say that, for instance, Edmund Spenser's "Sonnet 81" (example no. 2) could be used as a secondary prototype of Elizabethan love poetry in the Petrarchan tradition, Wordsworth's "Daffodils" (example no. 4) as a prototype of Romantic poetry (of nature), and T.S. Eliot's well-known "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" as a prototype of modemist poetry.

3.4 Lyric framings

Among the aforementioned features, no. 4 (versification) is not only (trans-) relevant historically, but also if one wants to account for the ability of in- formed recipients to recognize a poem as such. Owing to its particularly frequent occurrence in what for time immemorial has been regarded as poetry, and consequently owing to its conditioning effect on the recipients' awareness of the lyric, it can also serve as a signal of lyricalness.

The continuing centrality of this trait for today's recipients is also corrobo- rated by yet another result of my survey: there was a striking correlation between the general judgement that a particular text was not a poem, or at least of questionable lyricalness, and the feeling that this trait was absent; among all the traits that were found not to apply in cases where the students had answered 'no poem', the lack of acoustic versification (or of the 'musicali- ty' of the texts) figured most frequently37.

37 This refers again to the 17 students who did the detailed extra questionnaire mentioned above, in note 31 .

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84 Werner Wolf

As can be seen here, versification can apparently not only be regarded as a component of a generic prototype frame, but also as a frame marker, which in a quasi-metonymical way may raise the expectation of other charac- teristic traits, that would belong to the same frame. Yet, this is but one illus- tration of the connection between the selection of a particular frame by the recipient and corresponding stimuli or 'framings'.38 There is in fact not only versification, but a whole number of textual and

contextual framings that are relevant for poetry. As in the case of the nine traits of the lyric, these markers must not be misunderstood as being always necessarily present or relevant in their entirety. They rather constitute a range of possibilities that again encompass historical and other variations. As for the lyric in oral form, the framing situation, for instance of a poetry

recital, is one possible marker; the slowness of the reciting voice and gener- ally the particular tone of a recital (which differs from a narrative tone) is another one. It is related to the lyric being considered a 'difficult' genre characterized by the use of deviant language. Moreover, the consequence of versification, namely the audibility of pauses and sound patterns resulting from rhythm and rhyme is in many cases a particularly powerful signal of lyricalness.

As for poetry in written form, the book in which a poem is printed can be an obvious framing, above all if it is a volume of poetry entitled as such. The relative shortness of a poem, especially if it does not occupy more than one page and can thus be viewed as one text at a glance, is a further potential framing. The same is true of some poem titles that contain a generic indica- tion such as 'song' (cf. examples nos. 1 and 5). Perhaps the most persuasive framing signal for any reader of poetry, as it actually frames the text by exceptionally large margins, is the consequence of versification on the level of the layout: the justified left margin39. It often appears in combination with the capitalization of the first letter in each verse, although one must allow, here as in all cases, for some change in (sub-)generic and historical conven- tions: in many modem poems the capitalization has been dropped, in prose poems even the layout no longer indicates lyricalness, and in visual poetry there is frequently no justified left margin either. Yet, versification has been such a common feature of past poetry that it has conditioned a poetical 'response' to a considerable extent and, as we have seen, demonstrably continues to do so even nowadays.

38 For the concept of literary "framing' as opposed to frame' see Wolf 1999. 39 Cf. Bode 2001 : 1 4: "Rahmung und Kontext, Funktion und graphische Einrichtung sind die

entscheidenden markerď (framing and context, function and layout are the decisive markers').

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The Lyric - an Elusive Genre 85

4. The cognitive-prototypical approach applied to a contemporary example: Seamus Heaney, "Incertus"

In conclusion, the proposed reconceptualization of the lyric that so far has been explained in theory shall be illustrated using a text that barely looks like a poem: Seamus Heaney's "Incertus" from the 1972 collection Wintering Out (example no. 9).

As the layout already indicates, this is clearly a prose text, and thus one of the most compelling framings of lyricalness does not operate here. In addition, even when paying attention to the acoustic level, no significant rhythmic patterns emerge, so that one could not even speak of covert (acoustic) versification. So at first, and in particular if one was given only a xerox copy of the text and thus did not know that the text has been re-edited in an anthology entitled New Selected Poems, no lyric expectations are raised, and so the reader would probably begin by applying a different frame.

However, as soon as one starts reading the text and pays attention to the semantic level, features appear that do not dovetail with the expectation of an ordinary prose text, in particular difficulties in understanding. Together with the conspicuous brevity of the text, these difficulties will arguably lead to a revision of this expectation in favour of an application of the frame 'lyric' (in this case, more specifically, 'prose poem').

The most startling difficulty on a first perusal of the text is certainly the apparent lack of reference of "it" and 'its' relationship to "disguised" in the first line. Even if in line 2 the reference to the Latin title becomes clear, the rela- tion to 'disguise' remains obscure, and it is only in the last but one line that "it" is revealed as the speaker's "pseudonym". This points to the general lyric tendency to deviate from everyday language; in this case one could argue that the use of language even departs from the kind of literary discourse that one would, for instance, encounter in a short story. Such deviations can also be seen in the unusual employment of Latin (in the title) and in numerous 'hard words' derived from Latin or Greek: "obeisance", "pseudonym", "tegu- ment" (It. 3, 4, 5), to name some of the most conspicuous examples. In addition, the text weaves a dense pattern of metaphors and comparisons. To be "disguised" in a "pseudonym" (1. 1) is one of them; others are: "tagging it under my efforts" (I. 2); "like a damp fuse" (I. 2f.); "A shy soul" (I. 3) and "like a mouldering tegument" (I. 6). The 'deviant' rhetoricity of the text, together with its rich and at first glance obscure allusiveness, require a reading speed that is doubtlessly slower than in the perusal of two paragraphs of similar length of ordinary prose fiction (one stumbles, for instance, over the ques- tions why the pseudonym is a "fuse" and why the speaker's "obeisance" is called "expert" [I. 3]). As a result, one in fact gains the impression of an emphatic, typically poetic use of language, perhaps most so in the apodictic, albeit highly suggestive sentence "I crept before I walked", implying the rise

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86 Werner Wolf

of a human being from the state of a "fretting soul" bound to the ground by "uncertainty]" and "obeisance", but who succeeded in "disguis[ing]" his probably unorthodox development and finally managed to walk upright, looking back on his old self as on a derelict and useless skin or "tegument" that has been cast off.

Thus, on taking a closer look at the text, its inclusion in a volume of poems seems justified, since it shows a family resemblance to more typical poems. This also extends to the minimalism of the means that are being used for constructing the fictional world: for instance, no indication of the sex of the speaker is given, although most readers would guess 'him' to be male (presumably as a consequence of a frequent propensity to disregard the warnings of literary theory and to collapse the theoretical distinction between the real author and the lyric speaker into an identity at least as far as the speaker's sex is concerned). Moreover, the reference to a presumably Catholic milieu occurs in the form of a mere remark on the pronunciation of the Latin "c". This minimalism also appears in the fact that these few lines contain a miniature fictional autobiography, which is divided into two distinct stages ('then and now') and appears centred on the emancipation of the protagonist, as viewed from his monological point of view in adulthood.

In terms of the typical traits of the lyric, the text thus displays the following:

* most obviously no. 2 (shortness and world-making through minimal units); in addition

* no. 3 (meaningful deviation from everyday language, as already ex- plained); and

* nos. 6 and 7 (existence of a 'persona' and his/her emotionally tinged perspective): the text displays monological reflections of a single voice, a speaker who resembles a 'lyric I', and betrays an emotional commitment, e.g. in the exclamation "Oh yes" (I. 4).

Two features, however, seem to be debatable and can only be said to apply with some reservations:

* no. 8 (lack of external action and suspenseful narrative development): on the one hand, the use of the past tense40 and the discernible sequence of two states of being ("I crept before I walked" [1. 4]) appears to point in the direction of narrativity; on the other hand, as 'creeping' and 'walking' are to be taken metaphorically, there is not really any external action; more- over, apart from the lack of suspense, at least one further important element of narrativity, namely a causal explanation for this sequence of

40 For the inconclusive relation between this tense and the lyric see, however, Wolfgang G. Müller's contribution to this volume.

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The Lyric - an Elusive Genre 87

two states of being, is absent: no mention is made, as would have been the case in a true narrative, of what exactly dried the damp "fuse" and eventually blew it so that the speaker learnt how to 'walk';

* no. 9 (absoluteness) is also questionable, owing to the autobiographical overtones of the text; however, the lack of identifiable specific references (e.g. to any known place or person) and perhaps also the omission of any pragmatic reason for the utterance also give this text a wider, more gen- eral relevance and thus confirm its dereferentialized 'absoluteness' to a certain extent.

As opposed to these clearly or at least possibly applicable features, the following traits do certainly not apply to the text:

* most conspicuously no. 4 (versification), moreover

* no. 1 (orality/performativity), as nothing indicates that the text should be recited rather than read, and,

* partly owing to the lack of a versified structure which would emphasize recurrences, trait no. 5 (heightened self-referentiality).

In sum, concerning the problem of the lyricalness of "Incertus" one can say: in spite of the obvious fact that versification as a central feature (and marker) of lyricalness has no relevance for this text, it can nevertheless be seen, all in all, to have at least some family resemblance with the lyric, although it is certainly a more distant relation to this prototype. "Incertus" is thus, in terms of generic classification, an ambiguous, 'uncertain' text (one might even say that its generic 'uncertainty' mirrors a residual uncertainty of the speaker). Yet, if one had applied traditional approaches, in particular 'digital' generic definitions, whose application permits only results within a binary framework ('yes' or 'no'), this ambivalence could only have led to unsatisfactory results: either the text would have been excluded from the lyric genre as non-lyric prose (as Lamping [see 1989/1993: 36-38] generally does with prose po- ems; cf. also Burdorf 1995: 15) - in this case the resemblance to the lyric would have been lost; or it would have been included into the genre - in which case the distance from the typical lyric would elude the classification.

Consequently, thanks to the cognitive and prototypical approach, this ambivalent text can be described in a more flexible way: neither as typically lyric nor as absolutely non-lyric, but somewhere in between: as 'relatively lyric'. At the same time, this approach can best account for the probable reaction of a reader who at first sight (in particular if the text is read out of the context of its framing volume) might have been tempted to try and use the frame 'ordinary prose', but then would presumably have applied the frame 'lyric' - with some hesitations, but ultimately with arguably better results. The

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88 Werner Wolf

relevance of the frame lyric to this text is also corroborated by the aforemen- tioned survey: although "Incertus" got the lowest rating in classification as a poem among all of the ten examples, this text was nevertheless considered to be a poem by one sixth (= 1 6.7 %) of 1 8 students who had to opt for 'yes', 'no' or 'don't know'41, and among those eight students who were given a choice of five gradations of lyricalness only one (= 12.5 %) excluded it definitely from the genre of poetry altogether, while all the others thought it had at least some lyricalness (4 = 50 % regarded it as only probably no poem; 2 = 25 % as ambivalent, and 1 =12.5 % as probably a poem)42.

5. Conclusion

This sketchy reconceptualization of the lyric may not as yet be fully convinc- ing in its present, abbreviated form, as many details could only be adum- brated and only a few examples could be given. At any rate, this is certainly not the final word in the generic discussion of the lyric. One obvious possibil- ity for further research on the generic description of the lyric would be to continue testing the prototypical approach, and in particular the nine traits proposed here, empirically. As a matter of fact, these traits are to a certain extent already grounded on some empirical evidence, as they are derived from previous research and consequently from the evaluations and experi- ences of many readers of poetry. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to gather more evidence about their actual validity by means of extended empirical tests, even if this would only provide information about today's recipients and could not reveal much about historical prototypes.

41 50 % voted for 'no' and 33.3 % for 'don't know'. For the sake of rendering answers easier no gradability of lyricalness was provided for two groups - the idea being that the results would mirror, to a certain extent, the degree of lyricalness of each text, which they did in fact: the ratings were (reduced to the ratio of positive classifications as poems to the totality of classifications of each text): text 1: 88.9 %; text 2: 94.5 %; text 3: 66 %; texts 4 and 5: 1 00 %; text 6: 50 %; text 7: 55.6 %; text 8: 44.5 %, and texts 9 and 1 0: 1 6.7 %. Most of the ratings correspond to the votes of the group which had the possibility of grading lyricalness (cf. the following note).

42 The results for the other 9 texts in this group were (in ratings from 5 to 1 with 5 representing the highest degree of lyricalness): text 1 : 100 % for degree 5; text 2: 62.5 % for degree 5, 1 2.5% for degree 4, 1 2.5 % for degree 3, and 1 2.5 % for degree 2; text 3: 62.5 % for degree 5, 1 2.5 % for degree 4, and 25 % for degree 3; text 4: 1 00 % for degree 5; text 5: 87.5 % for degree 5, and 1 2.5 % for degree 4; text 6: 50 % for degree 5, 37.5 % for degree 4, and 1 2.5 % for degree 3; text 7: 37.5 % for degree 5, 50 % for degree 4, and 12.5 % for degree 3; text 8: 25 % for degree 5, 25 % for degree 4 and 50 % for degree 3; text 1 0: 50 % for degree 5, 25 % for degree 4 and 25 % for degree 2. If grades 5 and 4 are combined (A) in order to compare these results with those of the students who had to vote 'yes', 'no' or 'don't know' (B) the results are equal, or almost equal, for the majority of texts (1-5, 8 and 9), while the results differ for text 6 (A: 87.5 %; B: 50 %), text 7 (A: 87.5 %; B: 55.7 %) and, most strikingly, also for text 10 (A: 85 %; B: 16.6 %).

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The Lyric - an Elusive Genre 89

Generally, the lyric is perhaps one of those elusive phenomena where one's ambition should not be to solve the problems raised by them once and for all, but where - to use Beckett's words from Worstward Ho!- one should at least try and continue the enquiry, and be it only in order to "fail better". If the preceding proposal for approaching the lyric from a new angle reached such a state of 'improved failure', this would already mark some progress in genre theory. At any rate, this would be less problematic for literary studies as a scholarly enterprise than to stop trying to clarify such a basic concept as the lyric altogether - while nevertheless continuing to use it. Indeed - to borrow once again from Wittgenstein -, whereof literary scholars speak in their teachings, thereof they cannot be silent in their research.

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Werner Wolf

Institut für Anglistik Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz

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