Lyric beyond Containment

This introduction to the special issue Lyric beyond Containment does not propose to redefine lyric. Nor does it seek to inaugurate a new turn in literary criticism; this is not the “new new lyric studies.” Instead, it argues that lyric tropes, such as the speaking “I,” the address to an absent or anthropomorphized other, or the brief glimpse of finely wrought feeling, prove fruitful in theorizing material, historical, political, and literary forms of subjectivity, personhood, relationality, and reciprocity. Whereas these tropes have too often been yoked to the decontextualized figure of the poetic speaker, this introduction suggests that they are vital tools for moving beyond notions of the poem as a closed aesthetic object, held apart from society. Moreover, these tropes occur across a broad range of genres, which are themselves illuminated through engagement with lyric theory. Building on important scholarship by critics including Julia Bloch, Jonathan Culler, Andy Hines, Virginia Jackson, Kamran Javadizadeh, Anthony Reed, Dorothy Wang, and Gillian White, the authors suggest that in lyric, and in lyric reading, language’s opacity contains generative possibilities for the theorization of social relations.