Why Lyrics Last: Evolution, Cognition, and Shakespeare’s Sonnets by Brian Boyd (PDF)

Description

Why Lyrics Last turns an evolutionary lens on lyric verse, placing the writing of verse within the human disposition to play with pattern. Boyd takes as an extended example the many patterns to be found within Shakespeare’s Sonnets. There, the Bard avoids all narrative and demonstrates the power that verse can have when liberated of story.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐”Why Lyrics Last: Evolution, Cognition, and Shakespeare’s Sonnets” is a fascinating, thought provoking study of lyric, stories, Shakespeare and the evolution of culture.This spare book provocatively brings evolutionary science to the Sonnets of Shakespeare and lyric poetry. Far from a detailed reading of each poem, this book may be of greatest interest to those who know well the lyric poetry (I am not in that crowd so when the author cites as evidence sonnets 30, 60 and 73, for example, a cloud of unknowing greens me like an algae bloom). Boyd explains his intentions and then models what he considers to be a compelling reading of Sonnet 30 before addressing the nature and order of the Sonnets with a chapter each for the loves addressed: the Mistress and the Youth. We then approach Status and Death from biological perspectives in order to better appreciate the liveliness of one of the Sonnets’ persistent preoccupations: the worth of deathless art and the time of life.Most powerful or incisive, in my mind, are the remarks about the effects of the sonnet (a poet grapples with the various and limited at once) and the striking absence of narrative within each individual sonnet of Shakespeare and within the collection itself. Boyd shines writing about both the nature of lyric and the role narrative plays there. He sees Shakespeare as driven toward immortality by the challenge of the lyric.The literary critic, as gentle in manners and sensible in mind as Boyd is, comes off well here and says much with clarity, sense and concision about what matters to me when I think about poetry. Moving swiftly from bonobo politics and Paleolithic egalitarianism to protocols of Elizabethan status is jarring; it may not always be so. One day we may be more satisfactorily informed by matters of our biological legacy and genetic heritage so that we understand the cultural practices and social frames of our lives past and present and so that we can be thoughtful readers of poetry without necessarily mentioning Terror Management Theory and silverback gorillas. Until that day comes, we can gladly appreciate Brian Boyd. We are reminded that art is a form of play with biological and social roots and art’s manifestations mind the brain’s limits or perish. Not everything persuades but much is fresh and all is thoughtful here.

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