The Literary Taylor Swift - by Betsy Winakur Tontiplaphol & Anastasia Klimchynskaya (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Taylor Swift, arguably the most prolific and acclaimed singer-songwriter of the 21st century, has shaped her listeners' collective consciousness and challenged her industry's often limiting attitudes toward genre, revision, and collaboration. The Literary Taylor Swift both explores Swift's engagements, intertextual and otherwise, with literature and treats her songs as literature-as stories, poems, and other textual forms to which literary-critical theories and methodologies can be productively applied. These essays present four themes: Swift and the literary-historical canon; Swift and the language of gender and sexuality; Swift and the relationship between writing and memory; and Swift and the nature of literary craft"--

Book Synopsis

Taylor Swift, arguably the most prolific and acclaimed singer-songwriter of the 21st century, has shaped her listeners' collective consciousness and challenged her industry's often limiting attitudes toward genre, revision, and collaboration.

Although Swift is a perennial subject in the media, cast in both a positive and a negative light, few professional scholars have considered her ever-growing body of work. The Literary Taylor Swift examines Swift's significance and timeliness through literary analysis and theory.

Taylor Swift has been celebrated for her ability to craft immersive narratives and to articulate, with lyrical acuity, a broad range of emotional experiences, and her lyrics underscore her profound relationship with text. The Literary Taylor Swift explores Swift's engagements, intertextual and otherwise, with literature and treats her songs as literature-as, that is, stories, poems, and other textual forms to which literary-critical theories and methodologies can and should be productively applied. This collection offers carefully curated arguments constellated around four key relationships: Swift and the literary-historical canon; Swift and the language of gender and sexuality; Swift and the relationship between writing and memory; and Swift and the nature of literary craft.

Review Quotes

"Taylor Swift's artistic and commercial success has not just impacted the language of music, but language itself. This far-reaching volume approaches the superstar from every angle to assess the way Swift reflects and shapes literary culture-and why it matters not just to fans, but to everyone with a voice and a pen." --Nate Sloan, Assistant Professor of Musicology, University of Southern California, USA, and co-host of Switched on Pop

"This volume addresses a significant Blank Space in literary scholarship, and it does so with Style. It is a detailed and comprehensive testament to the cultural impact, lyrical versatility, and complex intertextuality of a global pop phenomenon." --Elly McCausland, Professor of English Literature, Ghent University, Belgium

"The Literary Taylor Swift is a proleptic entry into the library of The Tortured Poets Department, anticipating what Swift made explicit on her latest record. Written prior to its release, the eras-spanning essays go way beyond decoding Swift's carefully placed Easter eggs. The editors and contributors prove that the singer-songwriter's work is worthy of continued academic scrutiny with approaches that range from explorations of intertexts to applications of theories of gender and race. Essential reading for scholars, teachers, and students of the self-proclaimed chairman's body of musical and poetic work." --Katie Kapurch, Professor of English, Texas State University, USA, and author of Victorian Melodrama in the 21st Century (2016)

About the Author

Betsy Winakur Tontiplaphol is Professor of English at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, USA, where she specializes in 19th-century British literature, particularly Romantic poetry. In addition to numerous essays, she is the author of Poetics of Luxury in the Nineteenth Century: Keats, Tennyson, and Hopkins (2011) and The Pointe of the Pen: Nineteenth-Century Poetry and the Balletic Imagination (2021).

Anastasia Klimchynskaya is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois, USA. She specializes in 19th-century literature in its intersections with science, technology, and the cultural imagination, and has published widely on "popular" genres such as detective, Gothic, and science fiction.