Several months ago, I had the honour of being asked to write a blurb quote for The Literary Taylor Swift, a new collection of academic essays out now, published by Bloomsbury Academic and edited by Betsy Winakur Tontiplaphol and Anastasia Klimchynskaya. Before I even read the book, I knew what I was going to say – and I still stand by it, having finished: this book addresses a significant Blank Space in the scholarship on Taylor Swift, and it does so in Style.
For anyone wishing to take a deeper dive into the literary aspects of Taylor Swift’s songwriting, I strongly recommend this collection. Over twenty essays, it touches on everything from queerness to cottagecore, trauma to time, memory to misogyny, Romanticism to renaissance. One of my favourite essays, by Claire Hurley, explores the use of textures, weaving and fabrics in folklore and evermore, and their connection to loss and memory. She identifies an ‘archival desire’ in Swift’s work, one I’d never considered before and can’t wait to explore further. Another essay, by Ryanne Kap, gets very close to my heart in its discussion of female rage and the mad woman: Kap argues that Swift’s ‘songs provide a notable public platform for women to recognise and refute the ways in which their emotions have been similarly apathologized and dismissed.’ Anastasia Klimchynskaya argues that the particular defining quality of Swift’s work is ‘excess’: a ‘too much-ness, a conscious going beyond the boundaries of what is collectively and culturally understood and accepted as normal, reasonable, or appropriate when it comes to feeling, behaviour, or self-expression.’ It’s wonderfully satisfying to see these notable aspects of Swift’s work given properly scholarly attention and discussed so articulately.
All of these are important themes in my own work, but I particularly enjoyed being encouraged to think about Swift in new ways, for example by Erin Geary’s essay on queer anxieties in folklore and evermore. Geary argues that the relationships in Swift’s songs are ‘half-bloomed’, and there is a ‘sense of failure’ running through the two albums, which she links with Jack Halberstam’s concept of ‘queer failure’, which can lead to more ‘creative, cooperative, and surprising ways of being in the world’. Megan Kuehnle’s essay on Swift’s re-recordings got me thinking about the ideas of ‘aura’ and ‘authenticity’ in the creation and (re)production of art, while Katherine Murray’s excellent chapter had me pondering Swift’s possible ‘weaponisation’ of cottagecore in folklore and evermore.
I took away something important and inspirational from every single one of the essays in The Literary Taylor Swift. It’s a manuscript I’d recommend you read time and time again. Next chapter!
The Literary Taylor Swift is available to order here, and in your local bookshop.
Swifterature 