Love Lyrics: Typology and Definition.

Abstract

The actuality of the research is
determined by the fact that Ukrainian literary scholars consider love lyrics as a kind of intimate poetry
or identify it with intimate/erotic lyrics without offering a specific definition. The aim of the article is
to definite love lyrics as a separate kind of lyrical poetry.
The study generalizes that: love is usually considered as a feeling between a man and a woman;
the etymology of love feeling is naturally related to the sexual desire; there are two main kinds of love
between a man and a woman: erotic (sexual) and platonic (spiritual), although the idea of the dualism
of love feeling (unity of physical and spiritual elements) is generally accepted. We believe that such
interpretation of love is sufficient for understanding of specifics of the love lyrics and can serve as a
basis for its literary definition.
Thus, we determine love lyrics as a separate kind of lyrical poetry, in which the image of
beloved one (a person of an opposite sex) and/or feelings for him (her) are the main objects of
depiction. That is, love lyrics are distinguished from others by the object and dominant feeling.
Despite the same object, love lyrics, in opposite to erotic (inspired by passion), are more restrained in
the expression of desires (more sublimated) and more spiritual (platonic), whereas erotic lyrics tends
to nudity, focuses on sex and sexual instincts.
We propose to examine intimate poetry in a broad sense – as all non-civic poetry, which
expresses personal (intimate) feelings and experiences (love, erotic, landscape, philosophical and
religious lyrics, poetry of friendship, etc.), in a narrow one – as a poetry of friendship and family
feelings. We believe that it is inappropriate to reduce love lyrics to the categories of genre/meta-genre,
because such an approach presupposes the assimilation of interconnected but not identical concepts
of subject and genre (in essence – of content and form). Formally (from the genre point), love lyrics
in Ukrainian literature are presented by folk love songs and ballads, love elegies and romances.