Theory of Poetry?

Abstract

Literary history presupposes systematic assumptions just as much as literary theory presupposes reference to historical texts. This is also true with regard to a theory of poetry. Klaus W. Hempfer’s proposal of such a theory, largely considered to be impossible due to the heterogeneity of its corpus, is based on the assumption of a prototypical enunciation that makes use of a speaker speaking in the here and now who, in speaking, stages a simultaneous situation as its enounced. This is what he proposes to call a ‘fiction of performativity’, which he considers to be typical of the lyric. The article takes up this idea in order to discuss its value as a theory and to gauge its scope with regard to the phenomenon of poetry in general as well as to the classification of the multiplicity of individual texts.