Abstract
This article deals with Jonathan Culler's Theory of the Lyric (2015) and the current debate on the lyric. When Culler's book was published, it became the subject of much debate, as testified by reviews in American and European specialist journals.
In some respects Culler's theory differs substantially from most accepted ideas - particularly in its downplaying of the notion of the lyrical subject, its emphasis on poetics as opposed to hermeneutics and its rejection of fictiveness as a constitutive feature of the lyric. The first part summarizes the starting points and thebasic points made by Culler's book; the second part presents a critical analysis of several of its concepts as well as the associations with other authors.