At the end of Jonathan Culler’s hour-long lecture on Tuesday evening, an audience member raised a question. In their works, poets often speak of solitude, the man said. Isn’t it a paradox if the poet expresses his isolation in a poem that he intends others to experience? Is that what the poet intended?
Culler was hesitant to answer. “Theories of the Lyric” was only his second lecture in a series of four, presented by University College’s 2010 Alexander Lectures. Each lecture had been crafted as a delicate sub-plot to a larger story, and it was clear Culler wanted to unravel it slowly. “The Lyric” was his story of artists that write it, the tradition that canonized it, and the scholarship that has fought to determine the hows and whys of its genre.
The Alexander Lectures were founded in 1928 in memory of professor W.J. Alexander, head of the English department at University College from 1889 to 1926. The lectures are usually a successive series featuring topics in literature.
Culler, professor of English and Comparative literature at Cornell University, has a background in structuralism and literary theory. He is completing a term as president of the American Comparative Literature Association. Culler takes an interdisciplinary approach. He has written over a dozen books, and his inspirations include Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude Levi-Strauss and Northrop Frye.
Culler’s lecture series offered a close deconstruction of the Western lyric and what it says—or doesn’t say—about its subjects, literary and biographical. On Tuesday, he used every instrument in his literary repertoire to evoke his elusive lyric’s history. Culler sought to appraise the enigma of poetry: “Who is the poem seeking to persuade?” His case studies ranged from Horace to Sappho, Baudelaire, and Frost. Complex questions followed. (One audience member: Is poetry delimited by language or its author?) Culler answered one citation with another. He spoke on behalf of the lyric’s greatest devotees: from Aristotle to de Man, ancient Greek philosophers to contemporary literary theorists.
If you weren’t aware that Culler was a decorated academic, you wouldn’t guess it going into his lecture. His tone was modest and his movements jittery. His voice often descended into mutters. He had frequent mishaps with technology. In one instance, Culler accidentally turned off his microphone and retracted his projector back into the ceiling. But the audience, clearly familiar with his work, was on his side.
