Taylor Swift’s lyrics, an inspiration for the approach to English literature

With the intention of immersing students in the work of the masters of English literature, a Belgian teacher proposed linking British authors with the lyrics of the American superstar Taylor Swift who in her songs refers to “Alice in Wonderland”. wonders”, “The Great Gatsby”, “Rebecca” or “Jane Eyre”.

This is the professor of literature at the University of Ghent Elly McCausland, who ensures that Swift’s themes offer an opportunity to explore feminism, as for example in “The man”, or the myth of the anti-hero, in the song entitled ” Anti-Hero” from his latest album “Midnights”, from 2022.

Earlier this year, the teacher conceived the idea of ​​starting a course inspired by Swift’s work in September after listening to the song “The great war” from the American’s latest work.

“The way he uses war, as a metaphor for a relationship, made me uncomfortable and made me think of Sylvia Plath’s poem ‘Daddy,’ which does something similar and is also very uncomfortable to read,” the academic said.

The “Literature (Taylor’s Version)” course is a way to make literature “more accessible”, “not to create a Swift fan club,” says the teacher, inspired by the songs of the 33-year-old star.

According to the teacher, “it’s about making people realize that English literature is not a pile of old books from a long time ago rotting in a library, but that it is something that is alive, breathing and continually evolving and changing.” , according to the AFP news agency.

The academic stresses that the same could be done with other artists and media such as Beyoncé or the TikTok video platform.

The course devised by McCausland uses Swift’s lyrics as a gateway to greats of the literary canon such as William Shakespeare, Charlotte Brönte (“Jane Eyre”), Geoffrey Chaucer (“The Canterbury Tales”) or William Thackeray (“The Fair of the vanities”).

In her compositions, the singer-songwriter references the works of many other writers, such as Charles Dickens and Emily Dickinson. According to the academic, there are also stylistic similarities with the romantic poets of the early 19th century.

For example, in the songs “Wonderland” and “Long Story Short”, Swift mentions falling down “a rabbit hole” in a clear reference to Lewis Carroll’s novel “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”.

In a conversation with Paul McCartney published in 2020 by Rolling Stone magazine, the singer-songwriter described her love of lyrics and how she was “reading a lot more than ever” during the pandemic.

The popularity that the literary course obtained made McCausland receive requests from extra-university areas to be able to enroll in classes, even through private messages and Instagram.

But also criticism and disdain for using Swift’s work in higher education. McCausland compares it to the skepticism sparked by the Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to singer-songwriter Bob Dylan in 2016.

Other educational centers incorporated the singer into their academic programs, such as the Clive Davis Institute of New York University or Queen Mary University of London, which took a summer course to analyze Swift’s work from a literary perspective.

Since the beginning of her career and starting with her debut album in 2006, Swift has achieved great success and this year she finds herself at the peak of her career with the Eras Tour, which competes with Beyoncé’s Renaissance to become the first tour to bill thousands millions of dollars.

The young artist also emerged this year as the first woman to achieve, at the same time, that four of her works appear among the ten best sellers in the United States.

The author of “Shake if off”, “Cruel summer” or “Blank space” begins her tour of Latin America next week before performing in Asia, Australia, Europe and North America in 2024, while preparing the launch in October from the reissue of his album “1989” from 2014.