Abstract
In her lyric theory, American scholar Mutlu Konuk Blasing explores the nature of lyric subject and its relationship to poetic language. She argues that the seemingly private, individual consciousness expressed in the poem is only a virtual entity. The "I" that we encounter in lyrical discourse is not so much the stylized "I" of the poet but ourselves.
In her detailed readings of poems byT. S.
Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound or Anne Sexton, Blasing emphasizes the public and universal character of the lyrical code which is, however, deeply rooted in the mother tongue. It thus helps us to glimpse the complex historical processes that result in speaking human subjects.