489239
2013
LAL22310.1177/0963947013489239Language and LiteratureKlimek
Article
Functions of figurativity for
the narrative in lyric poetry –
with a study of English and
German poetic epitaphs
from the 17th century
Language and Literature
22(3) 219­–231
© The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/0963947013489239
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Sonja Klimek
University of Fribourg, Switzerland
Abstract
Lyric poetry is a genre where discourse types such as description, argumentation, contemplation
and narrative can occur together, though in varying combinations. During the last two decades,
research has been devoted to the question of how to describe and to study such use of
narrativity in lyric poetry. As Hühn (2007) puts it, ‘poetry can profitably be analysed on the basis
of narratological categories’. However, this article argues that such a narratological analysis can
never replace the traditional lyric analysis. The aim of this article is to combine the means of
classical lyric analysis and narratological toolboxes with those of the new rhetorical narratology,
in order to explore the impact of figurativity (i.e. micro-narrative stylistic characteristics on the
‘discours level’ of the poem) on the ‘histoire level’ (or the level of the enounced, Müller-Zettelmann,
2002) and on the reader of the poetic text in question. As an example, I will study English and
German poetic epitaphs from the 17th century, because this early sub-genre of lyric poetry
provides enough distance from a restrictive mainstream-romantic understanding of poetry and,
at the same time, shows a high degree of figurativity with complex functions. In these texts,
figurative elements such as synecdoche and metonymy create ‘discourse events’ at the level of
enunciation (with the ‘lyrical I’ as the agent of a decisive change in consciousness or attitudes),
but in some cases figurative elements even create (decisive changes that ‘the reader is meant to
perform’, Hühn, 2007) that steer the reader’s mental construction of the poem’s ‘story world’, as
a key aspect of the text’s narrativity.
Keywords
Baroque, figurativity, lyric poetry, metaphysical poetry, narratology, poetic analysis, poetic
epitaphs, tropes
Corresponding author:
Sonja Klimek, University of Fribourg, Av. de l’Europe 20, Fribourg, CH-1700, Switzerland.
Email: [email protected]
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1 Methodical points of departure
There has been a neat connection between rhetoric and narratology right from the beginning of theoretical reflections on language and literature. Originally, narratio was a term
from antique rhetoric. And the ornatus, the decoration of the used language as it can be
found for example in figurative speech, was an important part of the narratio. It was not
regarded as superficial, but as essential to the narratio because of the effects it provoked
in the addressee (Quintilian 4.2.46, see Lausberg, 1990: 150–189).
During the last few years, new attempts have been made to explore the function of
figurativity within narratives. Biebuyck (2007) developed the basics of a ‘narratology
of rhetoric’, which deals with the ‘additional narrative unfolded’ by ‘specific figures of
speech or tropes’, a level of narration that he called ‘paranarrative’ and which can, in
some cases, even constitute a ‘figurative counternarration’ that activates readers. In a
similar approach, Martens (2007) connected rhetorical analysis to the study of ‘tellability, the point of narrating’ and that of ‘reader-oriented (cognitive and phatic) dimensions
of narrative communication’. In both cases, the transmission of analytical instruments
from one area of literary research to another has proven very fruitful.
This is also the case with the considerable number of publications that, during the last
two decades, have been devoted to the trans-generic application of narratological terms
and concepts to the study of lyric poetry. We find a descriptive basis for a differentiation
between lyric, narrative and hybrid types of poetry in introductions to the study of poetry
(e.g. Vendler, 1997: 101–104, who focuses her assertion of the presence of narrative in
lyric poetry on the ‘plot’ or at least on ‘the germ of a story’ in a poem) and in more
detailed theories (see Bernhart, 1993, who looked for a new, narratologically inspired
definition of ‘lyrical forms of discourse’). Müller-Zettelmann (2002, 2011) promoted
Bernhart’s quest for a distinct terminology and a general modernisation of lyric analysis,
taking into account contemporary (especially cognitive) narratology, consequently differentiating in her analyses between the levels of histoire and discours (viz. of enounced
and enunciation) of the poems. In the collection Theory into Poetry, edited by MüllerZettelmann and Rubik (2005: 97–249), one of four sections is devoted to the transfer of
narratological theories to lyric poetry. This popularisation of the topic owes a lot to the
various publications in the context of project 6 (‘Towards a Theory and Methodology of
Narratological Analysis of Poetry’) at the International Centre for Narratology (ICN) at
Hamburg University (see Hühn, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2011; Hühn and Kiefer, 2005; Hühn
and Schönert, 2002, 2007; Hühn and Sommer, 2009; Schönert et al., 2007), where poetry
analysis was combined with insights from ‘new narratology’ (based on cognitive psychology and linguistics), including also classical narratological Genettian terminology.
Even if there have also been voices supporting the antithesis that lyric poetry – or at
least vast parts of the texts we regard as typical for the genre – tends to a non-narrative
form (e.g. Link, 1995: 88–90), this article supports Hühn’s (2007) dictum that at least
some poems ‘can profitably be analysed’ with the help of ‘narratological categories’.
The implied limitation of some of the earlier approaches to lyric poetry is that they are
based on too narrow an understanding of the genre.1 Rubik (2005: 194) for example lists
a number of ‘properties which are generally held to be characteristic of poetry: brevity,
heightened artificiality, an over-structuring of language and a tendency to deviate from
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common usage’ (to which I would agree, with the restriction that – according to Burdorf,
1997: 21 − those are widespread and additionally possible properties of lyric poetry, yet
no necessary characteristics). Rubik (2005: 194) adds ‘epistemological subjectivity and
a concentration on psychic rather than outside events’ as further characteristics of lyric
poetry. These last two points show how much this ‘general’ understanding of poetry to
which she refers is implicitly based on a mainstream awareness of a majority of poems
written after the middle of the 18th century (when the focus of poetry changed from the
imitatio and aemulatio of handed down forms and topoi to the personal confessions and
mental expression of an original genius that bursts all traditions of poetic aptum and
decorum, see Meid, 2008: 33–38) and before the beginning of the 20th century (when
modern experiments of language shattered the traditional forms and topoi of ‘classicromantic’ lyric speech, see Hiebel, 2011: 394–396).2
In fact, a theory of the narratological analysis of lyric poetry that is based solely on
the assumptions of the aesthetic of genius as in romantic and post-romantic poetry may
not prove suitable for the analysis of poems from earlier and later times. When we regard,
for example, didactic poems of the Enlightenment, where we find no ‘poetic I’ confessing its feelings, or the special premises of fictionality of the narrative that lie, for instance,
beneath baroque occasional poetry, such a theory will not prove suitable for the
analysis.
Hühn, Schönert and their team explicitly include texts from the 17th and 18th century
in their analyses. Hühn and Schönert (2007: 313) define the lyric by starting from the
basis of ‘the anthropologically universal act of communication of narrating’. This leads
them to separate lyric poetry (that must be characterised by the typical narrative aspects
of sequentiality and mediacy) from ‘different text-types such as descriptions’, in which
there is mediacy, but no sequentiality. This would by consequence exclude descriptive
poems like Mörike’s ‘descriptive poem of things’ ‘Auf eine Lampe’ (‘On a lamp’, 1846)
from lyric poetry, because there is mediacy, but no temporal sequentiality.
Lyric poetry is a very heterogeneous genre where different discourse types such as
narrative, description, argumentation and contemplation or meditation, appeals, forms of
address, praises and others can occur together. Hühn (2007) himself is aware that his
argumentation could provoke the reproach that he ‘subsume[s] poetry indiscriminately
under narrative’, which Hühn, of course, does not intend to do. His definition of poetry
perfectly fits a lot of texts from this genre. It may even fit the majority of poems from the
late 18th and 19th centuries, but it ignores many other phenomena of lyric poetry, for
example concrete poetry, be it of George Herbert (1593–1633) and Sigmund von Birken
(1625–1681) or of e e cummings (1894–1962) and Eugen Gomringer (born 1925).
Nevertheless, I agree with Hühn (2007) that lyric poetry – at least often – ‘can profitably be analysed on the basis of narratological categories,’ because also lyric poetry in
a narrower sense can present events, be it only in a mental state. However, I would
stress, such narratological analysis can never replace stylistic and rhetorical analysis by
means of prosodic and metrical categories and figurativity, even if these categories
derive from Antiquity or early Renaissance and therefore do not seem very innovative
(as Müller-Zettelmann, 2002 deplores). I am convinced that a narratological analysis of
lyric poetry (with inspiration from linguistics and cognitive poetics) needs to be combined with a traditional prosodic and metrical analysis as well as with the outcomes of the
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new ‘narratology of rhetoric’ (see Biebuyck, 2007) as a thoughtful rhetorical analysis of
figurativity and its functions as ‘micro-narrative stylistic elements’.
The inclusion of many different examples of lyric poetry (typologically different and
from different ages) thus seems essential to me. Baroque lyric poetry, for instance, has
long been able to overcome exclusively ‘modernist constrictions of the notion of the
lyric and the fallacies resulting from this restricted perspective’ (see Braungart, 1997:
425). Therefore, for this article, I have chosen poems that stem from a period of time
before the common idea of poetry as a personal confession or an expression of individual
feelings.
Baroque texts in general are well known for their high degree of figurativity. By
choosing them as examples, I will illustrate how far an analysis of the function of figurativity for the narrative in lyric poetry can contribute to upgrading existing toolboxes for
the narratological study of lyric poetry. I will combine the methods of traditional lyric
analysis and the narratological toolboxes mentioned earlier with those of a rhetorical
analysis of micro-stylistic elements in English and German poetic epitaphs from the
17th century. The genre derivation of epitaphs, which originated as inscriptions on real
gravestones, causes the genre’s lapidary style. The poems are very short (often only two
or four lines, sometimes up to 14 lines when they take the poetic form of a sonnet), their
language is usually concise, ‘over-structured’ and ‘highly artificial’ (see Rubik, 2005:
194). Using Hühn’s (2007) terminology, we can study how in these relatively short texts,
figurative elements create ‘presentation events’ at the level of discourse, with the ‘lyrical
I’ as the agent of a decisive change in his consciousness or attitudes, and in some cases
even ‘reception events’, decisive changes that ‘the reader is meant to perform’. Thus we
can see how ‘reception events’ of figurative elements such as metonymy and synecdoche
steer the reader’s mental construction of the ‘story world’ presented by the poems.
The connection between the figurativity of a text and its effect on the addressee
already existed as part of antique rhetoric (see Quintilian and Lausberg, mentioned earlier). In the following section, I will focus on metonymy and synecdoche as two important micro-stylistic elements that frequently occur in baroque poetic epitaphs and fulfil
special functions in that genre. Sometimes it is difficult to differentiate clearly synecdoche, metonymy and metaphor. All three are tropes (figures in one word) from the antique
art of rhetoric, being part of the ornatus of a speech, consisting of the replacement of one
word by another. Metaphor and metonymy replace one notion by another whose meaning
lies outside the lexical field of the original notion. Metaphor is usually described as a
‘jump’ of meaning, metonymy as a ‘shifting’ of meaning. Thus, there is no categorical
difference, but a difference in degree between these two types of tropes (see Burdorf,
1997: 155; Lausberg, 1963: 79).3 In contrast, a synecdoche consists of a ‘quantitative
shifting’ of meaning within the same lexical field (see Koch and Winter-Froemel, 2009:
357). There are two main types of synecdoche, one where the notion used broadens the
meaning of the thing that is meant (totum pro parte) and one where it narrows it (pars pro
toto. See Lausberg, 1963: 70). Widespread forms of metonymies are the substitution of
cause and result, owner or inventor and thing, a God and his field of activity (e.g. ‘Eros’
for ‘love’. See Lausberg, 1963: 77). So in metaphor, there is no determined relation
between the used and the meant notion, in metonymy, there must be a qualitative connection, and in synecdoche, the link between both notions must be a quantitative one.
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Like metaphors, synecdoches and metonymies can have become established in everyday language use without having been “lexicalised (for instance, the metonymy ‘to read
Shakespeare’ instead of ‘to read texts written by Shakespeare’, see Eggs, 2001: 1198)”.
2 Text analysis
In lamentation poetry of the 17th and 18th century, figurativity often serves the function
of evoking, by the indirectness of the notion itself, a thing or a concept that cannot be, or
by preference is not, named directly. One could compile a long list of examples of poetic
epitaphs in which the process of dying is synecdochically replaced with another process
that is indeed part of dying, but in itself less drastic, more ordinary and, taken on its own,
maybe even reversible. Often, we find paraphrases like ‘to give up respiration’ (see following quotation) which can be called a synecdoche, naming only one physical aspect
(not to breathe any more) of the whole dramatic change in the physical condition of a
human body that comes from life to death. One example shall be named to stand for
many others. In Paul Fleming’s (1609–1640) famous piece of deathbed poetry that,
according to its title, shall function as an epitaph for himself, we find the rhetorical question ‘Was bin ich viel besorgt / den Othem auffzugeben?’ (‘Why should I worry / to give
up respiration?’, Fleming, 1969 [1642]/: 670). The speaker of the poem, whether it is the
poet himself or simply a character role played by the poet,4 feels safe in the awareness of
his merits and his future celebrity and therefore does not fear his own death. The synecdoche as a single brief ‘discourse event’ helps the speaker to diminish rhetorically what
on the ‘histoire level’ is a drastic occurrence. In Fleming’s epitaph of 1640, the tradition
of Christian consolation in the face of death is already overlaid by a philosophical, that
is, neo-stoical idea. Death shall not be accepted silently because one expects eternal life
in God, but in posthumous fame that one has acquired by one’s own deeds.
Tropes like the synecdoche of ‘giving up breathing’ often have become so accustomed
that they are hardly recognised as figurative speech. Similar phenomena are widespread
in every genre of texts that come from a specific worldview. In Christian contexts (the
source of many epitaphs and lamentation poems from the Middle Ages and the Early
Modern Age), we find many metonymies like ‘Heaven’ (the place stands for its believed
inhabitants, that is, God and his angels). Ben Jonson’s (1573–1637) ‘Epitaph on
S[alomon] P[avy] a child of Q. El[izabeth’s] Chapel’ of 1616 ends with the lines ‘But,
being so much too good for earth, / Heauen vowes to keepe him’ (Jonson, 1947: 77). In
a metaphorical expansion, ‘Heaven’ in this case also stands for the ‘place’ where the
good deceased stay after their death.
In the context of Christian beliefs, as for example in the texts of the metaphysical
poets of the 17th century, accustomed synecdoches like ‘our flesh’ (a pars pro toto for
living human bodies, consisting of flesh, but also of blood, bones, and so on) or ‘dust’ (a
pars pro toto for the rotting residues of dead human corpses) frequently occur. Both
synecdoches can be found in Thomas Carew’s (1594/5–1640) elegy on the death of
‘Maria Wentworth, Thomae Comitis Cleveland, filia praemortua prima Virgineam animam exhalavit’ (Carew, 2000: 79) from 1632. The poem starts and ends with the reference to the beloved girl’s corpse (line 1: ‘And here the precious dust is layd;’ lines 17–18:
‘We owe this world, where vertue must / Fraile as our flesh, crumble to dust.’).5 Also the
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‘Epitaph on the Earl of Strafford’ from 1647 that is ascribed to John Cleveland (1613–
1658) begins with such a Christian reference to the dead body that lies buried in the place
where the imagined gravestone stands: ‘Here lies Wise and Valiant Dust’ (Cleveland,
1957: 220). In German lyric poetry of that time, where the Christian context is still vivid,
but already being mocked, the synecdoche of the ‘flesh’ for the whole living body also
occurs frequently, as, for example, in the bawdy poetic epitaph of a nun in the notorious
collection of Christian Hoffmann von Hoffmannswaldau (1616–1679), where the
unchaste dead nun states that she has always appreciated Christian belief because it
includes the resurrection of the flesh (‘In Beten hat mir sehr der Glaube stets behaget /
Weil er von Aufferstehn des Fleisches etwas saget’ von Hoffmannswaldau (1961 [1697]:
12)). From an analytic point of view, these examples of figurative speech must be called
tropes, but in the perception of the contemporary reader, they do not create ‘discourse
events’ because there is no change in the situation, nothing unexpected happens (see
Hühn, 2007). Tropes like these have become so familiar that an ordinary contemporary
reader might hardly recognise them as figurative speech.
Hofmannswaldau’s epitaph on a voluptuous nun was not that extraordinary and did
not appear as impious to late 17th-century readers as it might seem to readers nowadays
(see Battafarano, 1990). The great number of funny poetic epitaphs from that time shows
that in the baroque age, the moral function of epitaphs in the classical Christian tradition
could already be alluded to in a mocking way as being phoney. Feigned reverence was a
widespread topos of poetic epitaphs towards the end of the 17th century. But the use of
polite synecdoches as substitutes for the act of dying (as in Fleming’s deathbed poem)
were also made fun of. In the relatively widespread collection of poetic epitaphs published anonymously under the pseudonym ‘Corydon’ in 1677, we find a remarkable epitaph for a wolf, ‘den ein bleyer bohn / gestürtzet in dem Walde/’ (‘knocked down by a
leaden bean’, Corydon, 1987: 121). Obviously, the beast has not only been knocked
down, but shot down (killed by a ‘leaden bean’ or bullet). To name his fall means to
synecdochically name only one part of the whole action. The ‘discourse event’ of the
synecdoche is therefore much more reverent. This reluctance to pronounce the cruelty
and irreversibility of death not only seems inappropriate with regard to a wild wolf – in
contrast to the reserve of Fleming’s ‘poetic I’ when it talks about its own death – but is
also contrasted in the next and last line of the poem by a ruthless depiction of the ravens
feeding on his corpse. It is from these two inadequacies that Corydon’s epitaph on the
wolf takes its ironic tone and its over-subtle (argutious) surprise effect.
Each text marked as a poetic epitaph (be it via paratexts, or be it via the typical beginning ‘Here lies’) was a signal for the contemporary reader to actualise the underlying
‘frame’ (see Hühn, 2011) of a real epitaph, that is, its state as an inscription on a gravestone. Poetic epitaphs also actualise another frame, that is, that of a poetic text simulating
the real graveyard context, but in fact being fictionalised by literary tradition, becoming
a poetic sub-genre of texts printed in books. In these texts, the introduction of a comic
element in the last few words of the poem has become a widespread phenomenon. These
are also the underlying frames for the reader in my last example, which I will analyse in
more detail. It comes from a baroque handbook about epitaphs and is an example the
German poet Johann Gottlieb Meister (1665–1699) translated from the famous collection of epitaphs Epitafii giocosi, written by the Italian poet Giovanni Francesco
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Loredano,6 which was published in 1635 as Il cimiterio. Meister’s German translation
‘Eines Spaniers / welcher an einer garstigen Kranckheit verstorben’ from 1698 reads:
Steh Wandrer/ spiegle dich/ an andrer Leuthe Schaden:
Pflegt dich des Fleisches Trieb zur Wollust einzuladen/
So siehe nur auf mich: Hier lieg ich schlecht und bloß
Lebt’ als ein Spanier und starb als ein Frantzos.
(Meister, 1987: 111)7
The form and structure of the poem follow the established poetics of the poetic epitaph: The metre is a classical alexandrine verse, the form usually associated with the high
style and dignified topics, consisting (as usual in German poetry after Opitz’s reform) of
six iambs with a caesura in the middle of each line. The speaker of the text simulates a
direct speech communication situation in which he addresses a person who in the present
passes by a grave, often referred to by the deictic ‘here’ at the beginning of many epitaphs (‘Here lies …’, see Newstok, 2009: 1–2 and 44–45). Whereas the speaker can be
the dead person himself or someone else who shows and comments on the deceased’s life
(and who could be associated with the poet, but is not clearly identical with him), the
addressee of the speech is usually imagined as a wanderer or a pilgrim. Thus, the text
alludes to the Christian topos of man being the homo viator on his journey on earth, starting from the cradle and ending at the grave, trying to fulfil God’s expectations and to
finally earn eternal life in God at the end of his life’s journey (see Segebrecht, 1978).
Therefore, the genre of poetic epitaphs consists of two seemingly opposed characteristics, being a moral reminder of mankind’s mortality and the futility of all earthly goods
and, at the same time, a funny, incisive, witty distraction for the reader. Nevertheless, it
is exactly this combination of memento mori and carpe diem that renders poetic epitaphs
so popular in baroque poetry (see Segebrecht, 1981, 1987: 130–133).
In our case, the speaker or the ‘poetic I’ of the text is clearly the dead person himself,
a fictive character on the ‘level of mediation’ as part the ‘enounced’ of the text (see MüllerZettelmann, 2002: 137–141). We have just the words of the speaker, which give the poem
the view of a dramatic monologue, and we learn nothing about the fictive addressee’s
reactions. Is he surprised, even frightened? Contemporary readers of Meister’s poem may
not have been surprised, because this is a standard opening sequence for a ‘poetic epitaph’
(Braungart, 1997: 436 and 438–441): The deceased requests the ‘wanderer’ to stand still
for a moment (‘Steh, Wandrer’) and listen to the message of his decayed life: This is the
advice, deriving from the bad experiences the defunct has made himself (‘spiegle dich /
an andrer Leuthe Schaden’, that is, ‘in my mischief’), not to fall into voluptuousness
(‘Pflegt dich des Fleisches Trieb zur Wollust einzuladen / So siehe nur auf mich’). Up to
this point, the poem is an ordinary example of an advice to virtue, strengthened by a typical argument used since the Renaissance, because promiscuity can lead to an early and
awkward death (‘Hier lieg ich schlecht und bloß’, that is, in this grave).
Readers of our day who know the dangers of AIDS and other sexually transmitted
infectious diseases may not be surprised by this argument. Nevertheless, present day
readers may not understand the last line of the poem, which in fact includes the punch
line that turns the whole from a moral lamentation to a cynical joke. Why did the dead
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person ‘live as a Spaniard’ and ‘die as a Frenchman’ (‘Lebt’ als ein Spanier und starb als
ein Frantzos.’)? Apparently, this has something to do with the preceding lines that cautioned the reader about permissive sexuality and its displeasing outcome. Handbooks of
cultural history can provide us with the information which cause of death was mentioned
in the context of sexual activity and of either French or Spanish men: it is syphilis (also
called the pox). This highly infectious disease does not seem to have existed in antique
and medieval Europe; the first documented epidemic of syphilis in Europe had started at
the turn from the 15th to the 16th century (Bäumler, 1997: 7). The pox is considered as
an affliction of the modern age, starting in the Renaissance and terrifying people until the
discovery of a trustworthy remedy (that is, penicillin) in the middle of the 20th century
(Bäumler, 1997: 351–366). It was in 1495 that mercenaries in the army of the French
king Charles VIII first brought this strange disease to Naples. That is why soon the pox
was called the ‘French disease’ by the Neapolitans and ‘Morbus gallicus’ by scholars.8
On their flight back from Naples in summer 1495, Charles’s contaminated army probably
spread the disease over many countries in Europe (Bäumler, 1997: 7–15).
The name ‘French disease’ for syphilis can be regarded as common knowledge in the
late 17th century. To die ‘as a Frenchman’ in fact means to die ‘of syphilis’. This turns
out to be an example of figurative speech that can be classified as a sort of metonymy:
The carrier of a virus (the man) stands for the disease itself. At the same time, on the
syntactic level, this is a synecdoche (pars pro toto) because dying as a ‘Frenchman’ in
fact means dying as a ‘syphilis sufferer’: The nationality of the supposedly first historical
group of carriers of the virus stands for the whole group of people who suffer from this
disease. This pars pro toto-synecdoche is further based on a totum pro parte-synecdoche,
because not all Frenchmen did suffer from the pox. Hence the whole nation stands for a
historical part of its members, that is, for the bulk of Charles VIII’s French mercenaries
who were regarded as the bringers of the pox.
The single word ‘Frenchman’ as a rhetorical trope creates a ‘discourse event’ that does
not correspond to a greater ‘histoire event’: contemporary readers immediately knew
which frame to apply, that is, their cultural knowledge about the pox. In fact, the Spanish
man in the grave had died of syphilis. To tell the end of his life story in this prosaic way
would not strongly impress the ‘wanderer’ by the grave (nor the reader of the poem). But
as a metonymy that is based on a synecdoche, it invokes a whole historical background,
associations of dissolute mercenaries, crossing Europe in excessive sexual debauch,
changing sexual partners every now and then, thus spreading the dangerous pox over the
whole of Europe.
Such associations change the image that the fictive ‘wanderer’ in the poem (as well as
the reader of the poem) has made himself of the deceased / the speaker. With the last
word of the poem, the addressee’s imagination is redirected from the moral dimension of
temperance and sexual abstinence that dominated the first three-and-a-half lines to
visions of intemperance and orgies, but also of creepy images of physical decay with
disgusting skin eruption. The unexpectedness of this change of topic constituting the
‘discourse event’ in the last word of the epitaph is a typical example of baroque argutezza
or argutia (Meid, 2008: 54–55). As a micro-narrative stylistic device, this trope unfolds
on the ‘discourse level’ what Biebuyck (2007) calls a ‘paranarrative’ to the pious
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narrative of the rest of the text. To read such a pointed ending of a poem and to mentally
re-enact the change it brings holds its own aesthetic pleasure for the reader, beyond all
that this ending means for the ‘histoire level’ of the text. Thus, it provokes a change of
attitude in the reader, turning him from pious compassion to sarcastic laughter. The
micro-narrative stylistic device thus presents a ‘reception event’, provoking a decisive
change that ‘the reader is meant to perform’ (Hühn, 2007).
3 Conclusion
The neat connection between piety and laughter in the face of death that is made visible by
the analyses of the late 17th-century poetic epitaphs unveils a baroque paradox of attitude that can be frequently found in poetic texts of that age. To make this paradox visible
within the poems, this article combined a classical lyric analysis that examines lyrical
qualities and reconstructs historical background information with narratological toolboxes, including that of the new rhetorical narratology. This methodically pluralistic
approach allowed me to reconstruct the unsaid and implicit and therefore revealed the
impact that figurativity can have on the way the reader mentally constructs the ‘story
world’ of a poem. A figurative paranarrative as in the poetic epitaph of the Spaniard can
indeed subversively undermine the whole proposition of a text. This example shows that
micro-stylistic elements such as metonymy and synecdoche are not necessarily only part
of a purely decorative ornatus, but can also fulfil complex functions within the narrative
of a text.
Transmitting the methodical instruments of contemporary narratology to the field
of lyric study obviously bears a high potential for the latter. Classical narratological
categories like the distinction between the level of the ‘enounced’ and the ‘enunciation’
(see Müller-Zettelmann) and between ‘discourse events’ and ‘reception events’ (see
Hühn) are applicable to the study of at least some poems. Finally, also a concept such
as paranarrative (see Biebuyck, 2007) that stems from the new rhetorical narratology
has turned out to be fruitful for the study of lyric poetry.
Furthermore, rhetorical narratological analyses like the ones presented in this article
can, in turn, give evidence to classical narratology that figurative elements in a text do
not have to be purely ornamental and should be taken into careful consideration as part
of a detailed narratological analysis.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.
Notes
1. In newer narratologically inspired attempts, we also find such restrictions, despite MüllerZettelmann (2002: 129–130). But even she, who usually argues very cautiously, implicitly
excludes (or at least distorts) a part of lyric poetry, as for example some parts of occasional
poetry and the whole spectrum of committed poetry, by assuming that the communication
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2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Language and Literature 22(3)
system of a poem always contains an ‘intratextual persona’ that is necessarily a ‘fictional
product’ (Müller-Zettelmann 2002: 142), thus classifying lyric poetry in general as being
always fictional. Activist poets like Günter Grass (born 1927) or pious chant-writers like Paul
Gerhardt (1607–1676) as well as any lover presenting an original poem to his or her beloved
would, with regard to their own lyrical production, probably not agree with this dictum.
Rubik herself does not consent to that ‘general’ understanding of poetry to which she refers.
Müller-Zettelmann and Rubik (2005: 7) want to do away with ‘the archaic myth of divine
inspiration and the ancient notion of a poet being driven by furor poeticus (“poetic frenzy”)’
and with ‘[t]he assumption that both the production and reception of poetry are terrains
reserved for the emotions.’
For a general review of the actual state of affairs in the discussion about metaphor and metonymy
see Tóth (2011).
For the discussion about fictionality and autobiographical truth in Fleming’s famous
‘Grabschrifft / so er ihm selbst gemacht’, see Herzog (1985), Kühlmann (2006), Naumann
(1966) and Schmidt (2004).
See also Carew (2000: 76) in the second epitaph on the young Lady Mary Villiers.
For more information about Loredano and his epitaphs, see Battafarano (1994: 459–474).
I do not include a translation here as the whole poem is being paraphrased or translated in the
following paragraphs.
In France, syphilis is called ‘Mal de Naples’ because the returning soldiers from that war
brought the pox with them. In Portugal, syphilis is called ‘el mal de los castellanos’, in
Poland, the ‘German pestilence’, in Russia, the ‘Polish malady’. In each country, the disease
is associated with the land it seems to have come from (Bäumler 1997: 17–18).
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Klimek
Author biography
Sonja Klimek is currently working as a postdoctoral assistant at Fribourg University (Switzerland).
MA in General and Comparative Literature at the University of Münster (Germany), PhD from the
Université de Neuchâtel (Switzerland). She is the author of Paradoxes Erzählen. Die Metalepse in
der phantastischen Literatur, Paderborn: Mentis, 2010 (in the Explicatio series) and, together with
Karin Kukkonen, editor of Metalepsis in Popular Culture, New York and Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011
(in the Narratologia series). She has also produced several articles on poetics, genre theory, fiction
and on poetry from the 17th to the 21st century.
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