Chris makes a little aside that brings back in that question of lyric vs
narrative:
<<(The word narrative is problematic here and
the distinction between lyric and narrative cannot be maintained, also,
but I'll stick with narrative here just out of convenience.)>>
And that brings me back to the sonnet sequence, partly because I'm looking
at Astrophil and Stella, but also because it's still a sometimes done
thing. I recently (re)read Marilyn Hacker's _Love, Death, and the Changing
of the Seasons_, a sequence of mostly sonnets, plus a few other traditional
forms, which definitely has a narrative arc of an affair as its moving
force. And she does do that thang well, damn.
Doug
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
(h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
now I long to give up cigarettes
and change the sheets on my carboniferous bed;
O baby, what Hell to be Greek in this country -
without wings, but burning anyway
Gwendolyn MacEwen
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