Discordia Concors. Immersion and Artifice in the Lyric

Abstract Descriptions of the lyric have been stressing its artificial, self-referential character, constructing it as an intrinsically a-temporal, non-kinetic, non-mimetic and anti-illusionist mode. While the lyric certainly derives much of its effect from its horizontally superimposed patterns of formal equivalence, our pleasure as readers does not solely derive from the physical re-enactment of a poem’s sound patterns or the cognitive appreciation of its formal mastery. Many lyric texts are immersive; they project a fictional universe and prompt readers to emulate a speaker’s strongly perspectivized vision and subjective vantage point. This paper examines the lyric’s world building potential. It investigates the conditioning factors and referential components of lyric illusion, reviewing in particular the genre’s alleged inability to produce narrative sequence, embodiment and experientiality (Fludernik). Conceiving of the lyric speaker as an innovative cognitive blend (Turner/Fauconnier) provides a possible alternative to biographical constructions of the lyric self. Possible worlds theory (Ryan) is used as a way to approach the genre’s marked tendency towards cognitive mapping and conceptual innovation, towards foregrounding the human endeavour of mentally grasping and representing the world.