This introductory chapter outlines the central subject of the book: the invention of the lyric body as a dominant mode of female representation in Western literary and visual culture, explored transculturally with a primary focus on Hispanic literary traditions. It presents the theoretical framework and historical arc of the study, introducing the concept of the lyric body as a culturally constructed, symbolically charged, and rhetorically inscribed body whose surface becomes the locus of expressive, ideological, and aesthetic projection. Drawing from Marcel Hénaff’s preliminary formulation of the concept, the chapter defines the lyric body as a body emptied of anatomical specificity and refilled with signs, values, myths, and emotions, serving as a screen upon which both poetic and ideological discourse are refracted. At the center of this inquiry stands Helen of Troy, not only as a mythical figure but as a hegemonic icon whose body became the earliest and most enduring model of idealized female beauty, and whose legacy structured the representation of the lyric body across centuries, both through explicit reference and through the extended presence of her doubles and surrogates, here defined as Helen-like bodies. The chapter maps out the trajectory of Helen’s influence as it will be examined throughout the book, from her elusive image in Greek epic to her apotheosis in Spanish Golden Age poetry, and her eventual decline in the work of Romantic and Modernist women writers. It introduces the key questions, figures, and historical moments to be developed in the chapters that follow, and establishes the dual focus of the project: the historical persistence and reinvention of Helen and Helen-like bodies, and the broader mechanisms through which female bodies acquire and lose iconic hegemony.