Unlyric: The Lute-Object in Early Modern English Poetry

Abstract

ABSTRACT Considering that early modern poetic theory retains the classical genealogies and iconographies of lyric poetry as song to the accompaniment of a lyre, how can one account for lyrics which portray the poet’s stringed instrument, frequently the lute, as antithetical to his or her poetic aspirations, as a recalcitrant tool that resists the poet’s desires and thus engenders a lyric crisis? This article uses object-oriented ontology (OOO) to think through the lyric poet’s relationship with the lute which, fractured between real object and its sensual qualities, withdraws its essential being from access yet involves the poet in a network of sensual and essentially aesthetic bonds with the instrument. By reading several early modern riddles, sonnets, and other lyrics about deviant lutes as encounters between human and nonhuman objects, the article traces the poetics of unlyric — a form of poetry that disentangles poiesis from musical subjectivity and harmony, articulating instead a vision of lyric as fraught negotiations between entities whose forces lie beyond the powers of human art.