In lyric poetry, one quality that seems inherent in the manifestation of lyric subjectivity is the presence of multiple voices, multiple discourses. In Bakhtinian terms, the lyric can be viewed as a complex, dialogic exchange, and there are in such poetry several discourses with which the subject is simultaneously engaged. In his "Discourse of the Novel," Mikhail Bakhtin defines dialogism as "multi-voiced" discourse. Speech is by its very nature "dialogic," for any individual utterance is either born from or stimulated by the utterance of someone else-either what has already been said or in anticipation of what will be said. Bakhtin saw the novel as the medium in which dialogism could thrive, and he largely disregarded the dialogic nature of lyric poetry. Perhaps for Bakhtin the lyric subject appears too isolated, too "private"; however, the private voice of the lyric subject is often constructed from and directed to public discourse, and the subject's self-discovery, his/her self-fashioning, is validated and understood only through what is simultaneously is and is not: the speech of others.

Using Bakhtin as a kind of theoretical starting point, this volume of essays invest gates the manifestation of such competing "voices" within the tradition of lyric poetry. The lyric subject's understanding of himself/herself-through the very act of speaking/writing-is irrevocably connected, on multiple levels, to the heard and unheard voices of others. No matter how private the voice of the lyric speaker appears to be, nearly every utterance is formed from and then positioned between what others have said or will say. Included here are essays on the classical, medieval, early modern, and modern lyric. Some of the essays in this volume engage Bakhtin "head-on"; others, by focusing explicitly on the construction of the subject through multiple discursive dialogues implicitly bring Bakhtin to bear. These essays engage multiple elements of dialogism, including the convergence of masculine and feminine voices, public and private discourses, intertextuality and the "voices of the past," the dialogue between literature and art, and the always present dialogue between speaker(s) and reader(s).

No volume of essays has attempted-on a comprehensive, transhistorical scale-to analyze the Bakhtinian implications of lyric poetry as a genre. Each of the essays contained herein has a direct relevance to its specific literary subfield, and the volume will bridge the gap between the somewhat arbitrarily defined notions of literary eras and show that the lyric genre from ancient Greece to the twentieth century is itself in constant dialogue.

About the Editor: JACOB BLEVENS is Associate Professor of English at McNeese State University.