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COPYRIGHT 2005 Boston University
G. Gabrielle Start. Lyric Generations: Poetry and the Novel in the Long Eighteenth Century. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. Pp. 298. $42.00.
The thesis of this original and compelling book is quite simple: "From the Restoration through the end of the eighteenth century, the lyric was transformed by a history not ostensibly its own: lyric was rewritten through the structures, strategies, and spaces of the novel" (1). This history as told here, however, is far from obvious or straightforward. Instead, it challenges some familiar assumptions about the lyric and the novel during the long eighteenth century and demonstrates that the stories we have been telling ourselves about the evolution of these genres is more complicated (and more interesting) than generally recognized.
As Starr points out, histories of the lyric in this period have tended to be teleological, a search for the roots of high Romantic lyricism. Any such project, however, is destined to miss some truths about the genre's place during this time: "Many if not most of the greatest literary figures of the century ... either did not write lyric poems or wrote only a few" (1). The lyric kinds that were produced, such as hymns or lyrical fragments, were frequently embedded in larger forms. Meanwhile, the emerging novel challenged the very concept of genre in its heterodox appetite for virtually every other kind: "conduct books, sentimental and rakish comedy, 'she' tragedy, pastoral and heroic romance, ballads, newspapers, letters, diaries, paintings by Hogarth, essays...
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