"Amphion is the figure in Greek mythology who played so beautifully on a lyre that stones moved of their own accord to build walls for Thebes. While Amphion still presides over music and architecture, he was once fundamental to the concept of lyric poetry as well. In this wide-ranging study, Leah Middlebrook introduces readers to the myth of Amphion, describes Amphion-inspired poetics and lyrics in their heyday, and traces the tradition of the Amphionic from the Renaissance through modernist and postmodern poetry. In contrast to the individual inspiration we associate with the better-known Orpheus, Amphion's poetics evokes collectivity. The Amphionic is a poetry that animates and is animated by the polis: a human social phenomenon with a rhythm of its own. Amphion makes a significant contribution to scholarship on the connection between poetry and politics, the history of the lyric, and to comparative literary studies generally"--

Leah Middlebrook is associate professor of comparative literature and Romance languages at the University of Oregon. She is the author of Imperial Lyric: New Poetry and New Subjects in Early Modern Spain, and coeditor of Poiesis and Modernity in the Old and New Worlds.