Varja Balžalorsky Antić, The Lyric Subject. A Reconceptualization

Compte rendu publié sur Acta fabula (octobre 2023, vol. 24, n° 9) : Faut-il sauver le sujet lyrique ? (Léon Pradeau)

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This book interrogates the concept of the subject in the poem, against the broader background of literary-theoretical issues related to the lyric subject. Specifically, what kind of subject is the subject in the poem? What relation does it have to other forms of subjectivation that human beings experience in their life practices? What is its singularity?
“The Lyric Subject is a most impressive achievement: a shrewd evaluation of a wide range of writings (philosophical, linguistic, literary) bearing on the question of the lyric subject. With myriad poetic examples, Varja Balzˇalorsky Antic´ develops a rich, multileveled mapping of the various forms of subjectivity and agency in the lyric.”
Jonathan Culler, Professor Emeritus at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.

Table Of Contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• About the author
• About the book
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Part I
• Chapter 1 The Question of Discourse: Toward a Literary Discourse
• Enunciation, the Semantic and the Semiotic Mode
• Chapter 2 The Question of the Subject in Philosophy and Social Sciences
• The Subject in Philosophy
• The Subject in the Social Sciences
• Chapter 3 The Question of the Lyric
• Changes in Modern Genre Theory
• Genre as the Reality of Discourse
• The Lyric
• The Lyric Subject and Modern Genre Theory
• Part II
• Chapter 4 A Note on Terminology
• Chapter 5 Historical Fragments: Two Tendencies
• Charles Batteux: Les Beaux-Arts réduits à un même principe
• Hegel on the Lyric
• The Renaissance and Furor Divinus
• The Romantic Paradigm
• Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music
• The Emergence of the Concept of Lyrisches Ich
• Chapter 6 The Lyric Subject in Modern Literary Theory
• The Lyric Subject in The Logic of Literature by K. Hamburger (A Revised Reading)
• The Lyric and the Lyric Subject
• Karlheinz Stierle: The Identity of Discourse and the Transgressivity of the Lyric and Its Subject
• Anthony Easthope’s Poetry as Discourse
• Proceedings on the Lyric Subject in the Francophone World
• Transgeneric Narratological Approaches in the English and German-Speaking Worlds
• The Lyric Subject in Slovenian Literary Studies: Janko Kos
• Chapter 7 Modern Views on the Subject of the Poem
• The Phenomenology of the Affective: The Poetic Subject as an Affective-Pathic Subject
• Emil Staiger
• Antonio Rodriguez: A Synthesis of Phenomenologies of the Affective
• Sensing, Flesh, Stimmung
• Julia Kristeva’s Semanalysis: The Process of Signifying the Process of the Subject
• From the Sign to the Text as an Activity of Signifying
• The Subject-in-Process: The Fragmentation of the Unitary Subject
• Semiotic Chora, Semiotic, Thetic, and Symbolic
• The Genotext and the Phenotext
• A Final Note on Kristeva’s Semanalysis
• Part III
• Chapter 8 The Process of the Text and Subjectifying: An Initial Sketch
• Chapter 9 Ricœur’s Dialectic of Ipse and Idem in the Lyric Persona
• Chapter 10 A Rereading of Bakhtin’s Theses About Poetry
• Chapter 11 Ducrot’s Polyphonic Theory of Enunciation
• Chapter 12 Benveniste: Subjectifying in Language
• Benveniste’s Notes About Baudelaire as the Beginnings of His Theory of Poetic Language
• Chapter 13 Henri Meschonnic’s Poetics of Discourse
• References of the Poetics of Discourse
• Critique of the Linguistic Sign: Signifiance, Multiple Signifier, Recitative, Continuous, Historicity
• The Reconceptualization of Rhythm
• The Subject in the Poetics of Discourse
• The Transsubject as a Space of Individual and Collective Dialogic Subjectivation
• Conclusion
• Chapter 14 The Nonegological Theories of the Individual
• The Individual
• Immediate Consciousness
• Parallels between Benveniste’s Linguistics of Discourse and Meschonnic’s Poetics of Discourse and Nonegological Theories
• Schleiermacher’s Style and Prereflexive Consciousness
• The Prereflexive and Reflexive in (Poetic) Discourse
• Part IV
• Chapter 15 The Poetic Subject and Subject Configuration of the Poem
• Chapter 16 Case Study 1: The Poetic Subject in Troubadour Poetry
• Reference Works About the Subject in Troubadour Poetry
• Elements of Subjectivation in Medieval Philosophy
• The Lyric Persona and Intertextuality
• The Level of Enunciation and the Enounced; Metapoem, Performative
• The Orchestration of Focalizations and Voices
• Meaning-Making in Enunciation: Form–Meaning– Body–Subject
• The Intertwinement of Poems and Music: The Melodic Subject, the Collective Subject
• Conclusion
• Chapter 17 Case Study 2: Analysis of the Poetic Subject in Henri Michaux’s Poem “The Slowed Down”
• The Matrix of Michaux’s Female Poetics
• Between the Fullness and Emptiness of the Ego
• Flow, Fusion, Division: The Subject of the Enounced and Focalizations
• Enunciation
• Coherence: Isotopies
• Recitative in “The Slowed Down”
• Rhythm and Semantic Prosody
• Accentual Rhythm
• Semantic Prosody
• Conclusion
• Chapter 18 Recapitulation and Systematization of Subject Configuration
• Level of Text Organization: The Textual Subject, Recitative
• The Dimension of Enunciation as the Mediative Dimension of the Storyworld: The Subject of Enunciation
• The Level of the Storyworld and the Enounced: The Lyric Persona, Focal Points of Subjectivity
• Perspective and Focalization
• Additional Parameters in the Establishment and Analysis of Subject Configuration
• Dimensions of Discursive Situations
• Personal Pronouns
• Temporality
• Temporal and Spatial Deictics
• Appendix I Henri Michaux: “La Ralentie”
• Henri Michaux: “The Slowed Down”
• Appendix II Basic Schema of the Subject Configuration
• Subject Configuration in the Poem
• Perspectives and Focalizations
• Bibliography
• Index of Subjects
• Index of Names
• Series Index