Lyric Poetry: The Lyric Persona

• The meaning of "literature" changes with time and space.
• Five ways to define literature:
  • The foregrounding of language
  • The integration of language
  • Fiction
  • Aesthetic object
  • Intertextual and/or self-reflexive construct
• All five characteristics are optional.

Poetry: Defining the Lyric Persona

• James Dowthwaite’s article "Persona: Its Meaning and Significance" explores the lyric persona and its theoretical implications in poetry
• Persona is not just a "mask" but serves as the "human face" of a poetic text
• It bridges the gap between the author's real-world self and the finished poem, creating a space for poetic expression.
• Functions of the Persona:
  • Frees poetry from being limited to the author's personal life experiences
  • Allows for varied voices, viewpoints, and creative forms in poetry
• Theoretical Shift: Moves away from focusing on traditional subjectivity and the lyrical "I."
• The persona is highlighted as an aesthetic and cognitive element
• Applications: Applies to many types of poetry, from Old English poems like The Seafarer to modern experimental poetry
• The persona acts as a "laboratory" for exploring pronouns, form, and themes in poetry
• Significance: Offers a new outlook on poetic theory
• Addresses authorship and representation by focusing on the persona, not just subjectivity, in literary studies.

Dramatic Monologue

• Gabriella Hartvig’s chapter in An Introduction to Poetic Forms explains the features of the dramatic monologue and how it differs from other types of poetry
• Definition: A single speaker speaks to a silent listener, revealing their personality, feelings, and situation
• Formal Features: Combines dramatic and lyrical elements
• The speaker is not the poet, but a fictional character
• Often includes implied interaction with a listener or audience
• Purpose and Effect:
  • Allows for deep psychological exploration of the speaker
  • Requires readers to interpret what is implied but unspoken
• Historical Context: Commonly used in the Victorian era by poets like Robert Browning (My Last Duchess) to discuss complex moral and social issues
• The dramatic monologue uniquely combines narrative, character study, and poetic expression.

Poetic Language Syntax

• Consonance: Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds, but not alliteration
• It repeats two or more consonants while changing the vowel in between
• Assonance: Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds
• Onomatopoeia: Words that imitate sounds
• Rhetorical Figures: Contribute form and effects to poems, as well as dramatic, narrative, and non-fictional texts
• Analysis uses terms that are old
• Categories are based on language dimensions

Morphological, Syntactic, Semantic, and Pragmatic Figures

• Phonological figures deal with sounds, and morphological figures deal with words and word formation
• Syntactic figures are used on the sentence structure level (syntax)
• Semantic figures deal with the meanings of phrases or words
• Pragmatic figures involve how language is used
• Coherence: Rhetorical figures add to a poem's coherence, including speech, meter, stanza structure, and sound patterns
• Poems need coherence because they have few characters or a small plot
• Word Repetition: Repetitions and recurrences happen on phonological and linguistic levels
• Morphological figures include repeating morphemes, words, word groups, sentence parts, and sentences

Sonnets

• Petrarchan Sonnet:
  • It was a traditional way for a man to court a woman of higher social status
  • Love must remain unfulfilled due to moral or social reasons
  • Involves repressing passion and developing self-awareness
  • Has a conventional speaker and addressee
  • Uses blazon to describe beauty in a conventional way (e.g., lips like rubies, eyes like stars)
• Italian Sonnet:
  • Contains two quatrains (octave) and two tercets (sestet)
  • Rhymes as abab abab or abba abba and cde cde or cdc dcd
• English Sonnet:
  • Popularized by Thomas Wyatt, Earl of Surrey, and William Shakespeare
  • Contains three quatrains and a couplet that (mostly) uses iambic pentameter and rhymes as:
    • abab cdcd efef gg
    • abba cddc effe gg
• English Sonnet:
  • Typically presents a thesis (or two positions) in the three quatrains, followed by:
    • A summary
    • A surprising twist in the couplet that subverts the Petrarchan idealization
    • Became poems about bonding, love, and desire mainly in the English Renaissance
    • Saw a revival in British Romanticism through William Wordsworth (19th century)

Narrative Voice

• Heterodiegetic:
• Outside the story
• Does not belong to the world of the characters
• Homodiegetic Narrator:
• Inside the story
• Belongs to the story world
• Autodiegetic Narrator: Tells their own story
• Story within a story:
• Extradiegetic narrator
• Narrator frames the narrative
• Often in the beginning and/or the end
• Intradiegetic narrator
• Narrator embeds the narrative

Focalization: Perspective in Narrative

• Zero focalization
• narrator knows more than character
• ("Übersicht" - the narrator knows/sees more than any character knows/sees)
• Internal focalisation
• narrator knows as much as character
• ("Mitsicht" - the narrator knows/sees as much as one character sees/knows)
• External focalisation
• narrator knows less than character
• (“Außensicht" – the narrator knows/sees less than the character(s) sees/knows)
• Fixed focalisation
• restricted to one perspective
• Variable focalisation
• different scenes through different perspectives
• Multiple focalisation
• one scene, different perspectives

Drama: Communication and Speech

• Transmission of information:
• Internal communication
• External communication
• Congruent Information
• Discrepant awareness (between characters / between audience and characters)
• Dramatic irony is when significance of characters words is only clear to the audience
• Dramatic speech
• Teichoscopy: “viewing from the walls" → synchronous discussion of events
• Messenger report
• Monologue: speech given by a single person to an audience
• Aside: character on stage quickly addresses audience
• Soliloquy: speech that a character gives to themselves → “Selbstgespräch”
• Dialogue (dramatic characters)
• present themselves directly to others
• characterise other figures
• characterise themselves indirectly through the content and manner of their replies
• exchange information
• negotiate meanings and relationships in discussions or quarrels
• plan and perform actions
• stichomythia (line-by-line exchange): passionate interaction or reticence and alienation

Explore the lyric persona in poetry. James Dowthwaite’s article examines persona as the human face of a poetic text, bridging the gap between the author and the poem. The persona frees poetry from being limited to the author's personal life, allowing varied voices and creative forms.