Musset's Souvenir and the Greater Romantic Lyric

A close reading of Musset's Souvenir reveals that it exhibits all the defining characteristics of an important genre that Meyer Abrams has called "the greater Romantic lyric." The poem also contains a structural element recurring frequently in the greater Romantic lyric: the poem rounds upon itself to end where it began, but with an altered mood, which is the result of the intervening meditation. We submit that Souvenir not only belongs to the genre, but could serve fully as much as poems like Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" and Coleridge's "The Eolian Harp" as its very paradigm. (LOB)