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Article: Anecdotes of a jar: the dominion of spatial tropes in recent criticism of the lyric.
- Article from:
- Criticism
- Article date:
- January 1, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Wayne State University Press. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Because the material dimensions of a lyric poem are determined by its medium of presentation, just as they are for any other kind of text or utterance, there is no obvious reason why tropes that attribute peculiar spatial qualities to the lyric should structure criticism of lyric poetry in English, but historically they have, particularly in twentieth-century critical models. Cleanth Brooks created perhaps the most famous such model for the spaces of lyric texts when he appropriated a phrase from Donne and titled his classic exposition of New Critical models and methods The Well-Wrought Urn.(1) Although the New Criticism, as most undergraduate English majors have been ...