Unlyric: The Lute-Object in Early Modern English Poetry

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.

KEYWORDS:

• lyric
• object-oriented ontology (OOO)
• early modern
• lute
• riddles
• sonnets
• musical imagery

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

^1. Jonathan Culler describes apostrophe as “the pure embodiment of poetic pretension” (2001, 138).

^2. At the same time, many considered lute-playing a proper activity for women (Pattison 1970, 3–5; Marsh 2010, 199–200); and the instrument itself was associated with nobility and virtue. On the conflicted symbolism of early modern lutes, see Austern (1989); Zecher (2007, 139–46); Dubrow (2008, 32–3); Bardelmann (2018, 97–105).

^3. In his criticism of object-oriented approaches (vital materialism, actor-network theory, OOO) Andrew Cole argues that “in their attempt to respect the indifference of objects in themselves … [they] do so anyway by dint of the ancient Logos principle by which things call out to us and speak their being” (2013: 106–7). The charge is justified insofar as any interpretation of objects will default to a human perspective. However, Cole’s criticism seems least applicable to OOO, whose proponents not only resist the anthropomorphic call of things (in contrast to, say, vital materialism) but instead emphasize the nonhuman potentialities of all objects, including human.

^4. For “ground” as an early modern musical term, see Hudson 2001; Wilson and Calore 2005.

^5. As several scholars point out, early modern thought was conscious of music’s nature not only as an audible manifestation of universal harmony, but as an incomprehensible force eluding human understanding. Penelope Gouk’s work on the nascent science of acoustics demonstrates that sonic phenomena were conceived of as “puzzling and mysterious effects … which could not be accounted for by conventional natural philosophy” (1999, 158). Jozeph Ortiz’s study of music in Shakespearean England (2011) details early modern culture’s anxieties about music’s untranslatability into reasoned discourse.

^6. On Petrarchan love as violence, see Marshall 2002, 56–84; Nazarian 2017.

^7. Voice as object is the focus of Mladen Dolar’s seminal study (2006).

^8. In early modern England, Gina Bloom writes, voices were “imagined as unmanageable, beyond the control of those who ostensibly operate and ‘own’ them” (2007, 6).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Danila Sokolov

Danila Sokolov is Assistant Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English Literature at the University of Iceland, Reykjavik. He is the author of Renaissance Texts, Medieval Subjectivities: Rethinking Petrarchan Desire from Wyatt to Shakespeare (Duquesne UP, 2017) and numerous essays on early modern literature.