Organizers: Sarah Gonzalez (Harvard University), Richard Thomas (Harvard University), Thomas Munro (Yale University)
Dear Colleagues,
We are pleased to announce a call for papers for the “Lyric Forms, Modern Worlds” panel at the upcoming CCC.
Lyric is notoriously hard to define as a genre – a consequence of its manifold forms, metres, moods, and the contexts in which it appears. Whether one thinks of a lyric poem an “utterance overheard” (Mill), “a role offered to a reader” (Vendler), or “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (Wordsworth), the protean nature of the genre has occupied scholars from antiquity to the modern day. This panel considers two interrelated aspects of the history of the genre: how ancient lyric has been transformed into new forms and brought into contact with other genres since the Renaissance, and how ancient theories of defining and identifying lyric have changed in tandem with these developments. We will bring together scholars of lyric in antiquity, of lyric receptions from the Early Modern period onwards, and of lyric theory. This combination of contributors will spark dialogue between the study of lyric as a subfield of literary theory and as a subfield of literary history, bridging a gap that has not yet been crossed in contemporary classical scholarship. Ultimately, this panel will contribute to ongoing conversations about what makes a poem “lyric” and chart how this definition has shifted and will continue to shift over time. Is it always a matter of a “first person” speaker or subjective experience, or can work in classical reception offer us new ways of defining and approaching the lyric mode?
We welcome abstracts on any aspect of the reception of lyric in all its various identities, from the early modern period until the present day. As in previous reception panels at the CCC, such as last years’ “Odysseus in the Twenty-First Century”, we seek contributions from a wide range of countries, institutions, and career stages to gain diverse perspectives and make our conversations as productive as possible. Topics might include, but are not limited to:
- The translation, adaptation, and reception (broadly conceived) of classical lyric authors, such as Alcaeus, Sappho, Catullus, and Horace;
- The translation, adaptation, and reception of lyric or choral elements in other ancient genres, including but not limited to tragedy;
- The transformation of other ancient texts into modern lyric forms;
- Applications of modern and contemporary theories or conceptions of lyric to ancient lyric texts, and conversely;
- Modern and contemporary engagements with ancient ideas of lyric as a genre;
- Interdisciplinary approaches to lyric in the ancient and modern worlds, which bring classics into dialogue with musicology;
- Comparative approaches which consider Greco-Roman lyric and its reception in dialogue with other geographies and time-periods;
- Consideration of whether modern song may be seen as usefully restoring musicality to a genre for which accompaniment, at least in Rome, had become a fiction or metaphor.
Presentations may be either 20 or 40 minutes in length. Please submit abstracts of no more than 300 words (excluding bibliography) to thomas.munro@yale.edu by the 15th March 2026. Note that this is two weeks earlier than the overall conference deadline of the 31st March and late submissions will not be considered. Please include your name, affiliation, and contact details in the body of your email along with a clear indication of the length of your presentation.
If you have any questions, please contact the organizers.