The Lyric and Its Reading – Paul de Man’s Theory of Lyric

Abstract

The concept of lyric is a central component of Paul de Man’s theory of poetry. In several papers but first of all in his „Anthropomorphism and Trope in the Lyric” he developed a coherent understanding of the lyric as an act of modernism. Its epistemological character was given through Nietzsche’s often quoted statement on the metaphorical, anthropological and performative nature of subjective language and language use. The development of these ideas, however, took place through a detailed text-interpretation of two Baudelaire poems that served as metapoetical definitions of different poetical stances. It is possible that the idea of the lyric and reading lyric defined through anthropomorphism and phenomenality refers to, can be read like an elaborated epistemology of modern, subjective textuality too.