Lyric in the Renaissance
From Petrarch to Montaigne

Moving from a definition of the lyric to the innovations introduced by Petrarch's poetic language, this study goes on to propose a new reading of several French poets (Charles d'Orléans, Ronsard, and Du Bellay), and a re-evaluation of Montaigne's understanding of the most striking poetry and its relation to his own prose. Instead of relying on conventional notions of Renaissance subjectivity, it locates recurring features of this poetic language that express a turn to the singular and that herald lyric poetry's modern emphasis on the utterly particular. By combining close textual analysis with more modern ethical concerns this study establishes clear distinctions between what poets do and what rhetoric and poetics say they do. It shows how the tradition of rhetorical commentary is insufficient in accounting for this startling effectiveness of lyric poetry, manifest in Petrarch's Rime Sparse and the collections of the best poets writing after him.

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"In this genuinely original and carefully meditated study, Langer is not interested in the lyric "self" as usually construed or constructed, but rather in a series of textual phenomena that foreground the singularity and existence of individual objects and subjects. The power and the beauty of this book lie in its ability to give an alternate account of Renaissance lyric which avoids the Scylla of humanistic essentialism, on one hand, and the Charybidis of social-historical determinism, on the other, while offering a model of reading and understanding that is at once recognizable and "estranging" in the very best sense."
Albert Russell Ascoli, Terrill Distinguished Professor, University of California, Berkeley

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Product details

• Date Published: June 2015
• format: Hardback
• isbn: 9781107110281
• length: 224 pages

• dimensions: 234 x 158 x 18 mm
• weight: 0.47kg
• availability: Available