Cover; Half-title; Title page; Copyright information; Dedication; Table of contents; Acknowledgments; 1 Introduction; The premodern notion of "lyric"; Contemporary vs. early modern vs. classical poetry; Early modern poetry and the singular; A history of the singular?; Petrarch and Petrarchism; 2 Petrarch and the existential singular; Subjectivity, lyric, rhetoric; The lyrical singular vs. the classical rhetorical common place; "I was in part another man from what I am now"; "And the season and the time and the hour and the instant"
"A thousand of their pleasures are not worth one of my torments""Every other thing, every thought, goes out, and alone there with you"; Sweet, sweet, and "only you"; 3 Minimal lost worlds; Lost in the forest of sadness; One or the other; Questions …; Minimal poems, minimal worlds; This world here; 4 Ronsard's singular erotic reciprocity (Les Amours de Cassandre); Cassandre in the fields: Petrarch and Ronsard; With one glance, stealing the hearts of thousands; None other than you; There two rubies high above; Lexical redundancy: sweet and fortunate; 5 Singularity as emptiness
Petrarchism and anti-Petrarchism: a brief samplingThis divine frenzy, I no longer have it: the Regrets; That which I am, that which I do; Those others who …; Your Du Bellay is no longer, it is not much at all; Yet no one, except echo, responds to my voice; 6 Montaigne and his "sublime" lyric; This here is a book of good faith, reader; Because it was he, because it was I; Montaigne, sublime commentator of poetry; Cato giving laws to these; Venus and Vulcan; Montaigne staging lyric in Virgil and Lucretius; Montaigne letting go; 7 Conclusion; Turning to one: Scève, Ronsard, Petrarch
A return to the existential?Notes; 1 Introduction; 2 Petrarch and the existential singular; 3 Minimal lost worlds: The rondeaux of Charles d'Orléans; 4 Ronsard's singular erotic reciprocity (Les Amours de Cassandre); 5 Singularity as emptiness: Du Bellay's Regrets; 6 Montaigne and his "sublime" lyric; 7 Conclusion; Bibliography; Authors before 1800; Authors after 1800; Index
