Recorded November 9, 2017.

Lecture as part of Prof Calista McRae’s visit to College funded by the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Science’s Visiting Professor Fund 2016-17.

This talk explores what comic theories can fit a lyric frame. While the modern lyric is entangled with intense feeling, this entanglement glints with humor, just as intense feeling in our actual lives may be shot through with an element of comedy. Through glances at the correspondence and poetry of John Berryman, Robert Lowell, and others, I suggest that humor is central to these writers. In addition, lyric’s relatively unrecognized comedy can open up ways of thinking about humor more generally.

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