Lyric

Abstract The five instances of the term lyric in the Defence sketch what Sidney considered to be lyric’s domain; concordances with classical and early modern literary theorists such as Scott help flesh out his theory. The chapter also looks at twenty-first century lyric theory, seeing both what it can tell us about Sidney, and what Sidney can tell us about it. The particular looking backwards and forwards that characterises the European Renaissance made for a dynamic location for the evolution of lyric poetics and practice, and Sidney was at its heart. The chapter looks across the range of Sidney’s poetry (song, sonnet, psalm translation, neoclassical poem), asking questions about its origins, nature, and aims, and examining the ways in which it explores fundamental questions about the nature of lyric genre, music, form, voice, address, persona, authorship, and reading. It focuses in particular on lyric’s intertextuality and lyric theory’s emphasis on dyads and dichotomies.