{"id":31948,"date":"2022-11-20T22:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-20T22:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=31948"},"modified":"2022-11-22T00:50:59","modified_gmt":"2022-11-22T00:50:59","slug":"why-i-teach-a-course-connecting-taylor-swifts-songs-to-the-works-of-shakespeare-hitchcock-and-plath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/why-i-teach-a-course-connecting-taylor-swifts-songs-to-the-works-of-shakespeare-hitchcock-and-plath\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I teach a course connecting Taylor Swift\u2019s songs to the works of Shakespeare, Hitchcock and\u00a0Plath"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Elizabeth Scala<\/a>, The University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Unusual Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Title of course:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Taylor Swift Songbook\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What prompted the idea for the course?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This class is part of a group of introductory English offerings that focus on basic methods of literary analysis and research. It fulfills different requirements for potential English majors and the general student population, so I am always looking for news ways to engage them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a few years, I taught it as a Harry Potter course. I introduced students to classic British literature by exploring the Romantic and medieval literary traditions present in the novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But earlier this year, I realized I was bored. I had been listening to a lot of Taylor Swift with my college-aged daughter, who had been home for a year during the pandemic. Swift had recently released \u201cRed (Taylor\u2019s Version)<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Listening to her track \u201cAll Too Well<\/a>\u201d was my epiphany. Swift\u2019s vivid imagery and emotionally gripping detail had all the markings of a great narrative poem. She writes the song in a way that mirrors the recursions of memory. Her verses become increasingly strong and build upon each other once she starts remembering the past. At the same time, the song\u2019s imagery moves from fall to winter as she reflects upon the relationship\u2019s beginning and frosty end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does the course explore?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This course pairs Taylor Swift songs with a number of poems, along with a play, a novel and a film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The semester began with the pairing of Swift\u2019s songs with Renaissance love poetry. One class analyzing the metaphors, similes and colors in the song \u201cRed\u201d turned, a week or so later, into an exploration of Shakespeare\u2019s use of similar colors in his famous sonnet 73: \u201cThat time of year thou mayst in me behold<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From \u201cRed\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Loving him was blue like I\u2019d never known<\/p>

Missing him was dark gray, all alone \u2026<\/p>

But loving him was red<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Shakespeare, meanwhile, begins his sonnet 73 with \u201cThat time of year thou mayst in me behold \/ When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang,\u201d before pointing to the oranges of autumn\u2019s \u201csunset [that] fadeth in the west\u201d and \u201cthe glowing of such fire \/ That on the ashes of his youth doth lie.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where Swift moves from cool tones to \u201cburning red,\u201d Shakespeare moves through increasingly warm tones: from yellow, to orange, to red. But both move toward an intensity of color and heat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some couplings are obvious. For instance, Swift\u2019s \u201cLove Story<\/a>\u201d mentions the title characters of Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cRomeo and Juliet<\/a>\u201d \u2013 \u201cRomeo save me, I\u2019ve been feeling so alone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Others might come as more of a surprise: I paired Daphne du Maurier\u2019s 1938 novel \u201cRebecca<\/a>,\u201d which Alfred Hitchcock adapted for the silver screen<\/a> in 1940, with Swift\u2019s song \u201cthe last great american dynasty<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Centering on a scandalous woman named Rebecca \u2013 or Rebekah, in Swift\u2019s song \u2013 the song, novel and film explore the relations of mad women and madwomen, the tenuous line between anger and craziness. It\u2019s a theme Swift hits on in a number of songs, from her 2019 track \u201cThe Man<\/a>\u201d to 2020\u2019s \u201cmad woman<\/a>,\u201d which I paired with Sylvia Plath\u2019s poem \u201cLady Lazarus<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why is this course relevant now?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I think this course tapped into the zeitgeist in ways I couldn\u2019t have imagined when I first dreamed it up. Of course, Swift\u2019s music is popular, and she has long had a devoted following. But the October 2022 release of her record-breaking<\/a> album \u201cMidnights<\/a>\u201d has only made the course seem more relevant to students\u2019 interests. As a class, we spent time exploring the ways tracks on \u201cMidnights\u201d revisited themes and writing strategies that appeared in Swift\u2019s earlier songs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s a critical lesson from the course?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Analyzing Swift\u2019s writing will hopefully help my students recognize how certain poetic and literary devices operate in older texts \u2013 as much as those same books and poems from the past help them appreciate Swift\u2019s art at a deeper level. They seem especially eager to engage with older materials, like Renaissance seduction poetry and black and white film, when they can see traces of the same artistic techniques in the music videos and songs they watch and listen to today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Woman<\/a>
Taylor Swift often talks about how much she loves to read. Raymond Hall\/GC Images via Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Swift\u2019s award-winning songwriting<\/a> is attached to an English and American literary past in both obvious and more subtle ways. An avid reader herself<\/a>, Swift deploys forms \u2013 like metaphors, conceits and structures \u2013 that are part of a shared literary heritage that students might otherwise find old-fashioned and irrelevant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Far from diminishing the value of Swift\u2019s writing, tracing its connection to the literary greats shores up her authority as a creative artist. Swift, like all artists, is part of a great tradition<\/a>, and she calls upon it to create new works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What materials does the course feature?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Adam Bradley, \u201cThe Poetry of Pop<\/a>,\u201d 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alfred Hitchcock, \u201cRebecca<\/a>,\u201d 1940<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taylor Swift, \u201cfolkore<\/a>,\u201d 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What will the course prepare students to do?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This course has rather modest ambitions. It prepares careful and critical readers, as well as articulate writers and researchers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It pays attention to what language denotes at the surface and what it carries around with it in its connotations and associations. It teaches students about those features, using the Oxford English Dictionary as a research tool to probe linguistic origin, register and usage beyond what a term literally means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While delivering New York University\u2019s 2022 commencement speech, Swift urged the graduating seniors<\/a> to embrace their enthusiasms and be unafraid to explore their interests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finding a way to tap into students\u2019 enthusiasm for Swift, and tie her songwriting to literary methodologies, is my version of following her lead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elizabeth Scala<\/a>, Professor of English, The University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elizabeth Scala, The University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts Unusual Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching. Title of course: \u201cThe Taylor Swift Songbook\u201d What prompted the idea for the course? This class is part of a group of introductory English offerings that focus on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":31949,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[292],"tags":[12947,1740,12948,53,3506,2033,2595,12949,7297,12946,2042,12950],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31948"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31948"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31958,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31948\/revisions\/31958"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}