In this short video, I share my initial impressions of The Tortured Poets Department - namely, that it is Taylor's most intertextual album yet, peppered with countless allusions to people, places, music, art, poetry - and what this might mean in the wider context of her music and career. Click the image above to watch!
Month: April 2024
Is Taylor Swift a poet? Yes. Is that the wrong question to ask? Also yes
With less than 24 hours to go before perhaps the biggest release in music history - Taylor Swift's hotly-anticipated eleventh album, The Tortured Poets Department, already downloaded over 200 million times after being leaked the day before the official launch - the requests have started to roll into my inbox from journalists, all asking a variation on the same question: does this mean that Taylor Swift is, like...a poet? An actual...poet? [Click above image to read more]
Why do we need feminism? Thoughts from English Literature (Taylor’s Version)
As part of our session on feminism, writing and power, we looked at Mary Wollstonecraft's seminal 'Vindication of the Rights of Woman', a 1792 treatise that argued for the importance of women's education during a period where it was habitually denied. Expected to be little more than delicate parlour ornaments, women were not seen as worthy recipients of the kind of education offered to men - a state of affairs which Wollstonecraft laments, while pointing out its idiocy (surely men would prefer a wife with whom they can hold a conversation). As a thought experiment, I asked my students: 'If you could write a modern-day "Vindication of the Rights of Woman", what feminist - or gender-related - issue would you focus on, and why?' Here are some of the responses - you can also see a word cloud of the most frequently used terms above. Click on it to read more.
Swifterature 