Testing the Cross-Generic Application of Narratology to Poetry Analysis. An Empirical Approach

Abstract

This paper addresses the possibilities of a cross-generic application of narratology to lyric poetry by contrasting the macro-genres of narrative fiction and lyric poetry on a high level of abstraction as acts of communication in the medium of writing, distinguished by formal and thematic restrictions. While narrative, defined as a change of state, centrally constitutes a narrative text proper, a lyric poem allows for a wide range of text types, including narrative, in various forms, with a tendency towards condensation and abbreviation. The wide variety of narrative structures used in poems is then documented by examples from the English canon, featuring condensed, hypothetical, remembered, demanded, rejected, dreaded and imagined narratives. The importance of narrative in lyric poems is finally exemplified by groups of consecutive sonnets in Shakespeare’s collection, in which a particular narrative structure is systematically varied for greater effect.