Romanticism and Rock

Updated June 7th with additional links, a bibliography, and an expanded contributor list. 

If you’re interested in the topic of this post, please consider submitting a proposal to the edited anthology Rock and Romanticism.

I’m thinking about developing a course about Rock and Roll and Romanticism for the Spring 2016 semester, so I asked my colleagues on the NASSR list for music recommendations that pair well with Romantic-era poetry and prose. They responded generously with numerous suggestions both for pairings between rock and roll and Romantic texts and for the course in general. I’ve posted a list below.

Why rock and roll and Romanticism? “Romanticism” as a literary movement has traditionally been defined both thematically and as a period, with periodization usually taking priority. As a periodized trans-European phenomenon, Romanticism usually starts with either Rousseau’s writings of the 1760s-1780s, Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther in 1774, or the fall of the Bastille in 1789, and it lasts until about 1850, at least in England. By this date Wordsworth, Mary Shelly, and most other first and second-generation Romantic poets had died.

Thematically, Romantic literature tends to focus on the individual over and above the state or other economic or political structures, on democracy over and above monarchy or the aristocracy, on nature over and above the urban, and on imagination and passion over and above reason and traditional moral structures. Many of us who think today that our deepest feelings represent somehow our essential selves have the Romantics to thank.

Because Romanticism is a trans-European and trans-chronological phenomenon, it is very difficult to define precisely. Scholars have been wrestling with the question “What is Romanticism?” for as long as Romanticism as been defined as a literary movement, but especially since A.O. Lovejoy’s early twentieth-century essay, “On the Discrimination of Romanticisms.” In it, he claims that the term “Romanticism” has come to mean so many different things that it has ceased to serve the function of a verbal sign.

For the sake of my course, and perhaps to the annoyance of some of my favorite Romanticists, I will probably theorize Romanticism using Sayre and Löwy’s Romanticism Against the Tide of Modernity (2001). In this book, the authors develop a taxonomy of different Romanticisms (their solution to the problem Lovejoy posed) while presenting a unified definition of Romanticism as a response to capitalism.

So theorized, Romanticism then exists as a literary mode independent of any period. I am tempted to define English Romanticism as starting with Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749). If this starting point doesn’t make sense to you, try comparing the moral reasoning of its titular character to the presentation of Blake’s Jesus at the end of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, who acted from impulse rather than rules. In this approach to Romanticism, the 1950s and certainly the 1960s are the most recent resurgence of Romanticism as a mode, one that continues into the present. If you were to reread my thematic description of literary Romanticism above, it’s not hard to read it as a simultaneous description of the major themes in a great deal of rock music. And as you’ll see from the list below, many artists from the 1960s forward drew inspiration from major figures in English Romanticism.

We need to be careful when talking about either literary modes or periods, however: it’s a mistake to think that even if we could define Romanticism as starting in 1789 and ending in 1850 that all literature and art during this period is therefore Romantic. Even periodization does not eliminate the need for attention to theme. Earlier generations of Romantic-era scholars tended to define Romanticism in opposition to Classicism, which at least allowed for two different modes of literature to co-exist within the same period (even if they tended to periodize Classicism earlier in the eighteenth century). We should do the same, at the least seeing Romanticism as a mode arising within a specific historical and social context and then continuing into the present, co-existing alongside other disursive modes arising before and after it and continuing alongside it into the present.

A provisional list is below, which as you see very broadly defines both Romanticism and rock and roll. Please email me with further suggestions at jamesrovira at gmail dot com, and I will add your suggestions to the list and credit you below. Many thanks to all who contributed.

If you’re interested in more on William Blake in popular culture, check out the online gallery for the Blake in the Heartland exhibit on this site.

William Blake, general responses Note: Donald Fitch’s Blake Set to Music provides a comprehensive list up to 1989. Zoamorphosis is an excellent source of material on Blake and popular culture.	Alberteen, Miss World, “Princess Noise” Daniel Amos, “William Blake“ The Doors, band name and “End of the Night” (Quotes “Auguries of Innocence”) The Fugs, “Auguries of Innocence“ Kevin Hutchings, The Songs of William Blake, see also Spotify Martha Redbone Roots Project, The Garden of Love — Songs of William Blake. See this description of the Roots Project. The same page has a similar list of Blake-inspired music that has some titles not shown here. Patti Smith, “My Blakean Year.” Smith has done quite a bit on Blake overall and was once president of the Blake Society UK. The Strawbs, Grave New World (cover art is William Blake’s Glad Day)
William Blake, An Island in the Moon	Live performance, stage adaptation by Joe Viscomi
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell	Ulver, Themes from William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
William Blake, Milton a Poem, “And did those feet…”	Jimi Hendrix, “Voodoo Chile” Emerson, Lake and Palmer, “Jerusalem“
William Blake, Poetical Sketches	The Fugs, “How Sweet I Roamed“
William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience	Anda al Sinaia, Songs of Innocence and Experience, “The Clod and the Pebble” Daniel Amos, “Instruction Thru Film” (“The Chimney Sweeper,” Innocence) Daniel Amos, “Sleep Silent Child” David Axelrod, Song of Innocence David Axelrod, Songs of Experience William Bolcom, Songs of Innocence and Experience (2.5 hr. orchestral performance of all of the Songs from the 1950s, highly diverse musically) The Fugs, “Ah! Sunflower” The Man on the Margin (Italian band), “Songs of Innocence and Experience” Van Morrison, “Let the Slave” Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, “The Clod and the Pebble” Terry Scott Taylor, Knowledge and Innocence U2, Songs of Innocence and “Beautiful Ghost/Introduction to the Songs of Experience“ Van Morrison, “You Don’t Pull No Punches, But You Don’t Push the River” Victor Vertunni, “Little Boy Lost” (Part of his Songs of Innocence and Experience Project) Walter Zimmerman, Songs of Innocence & Experience (1949 string quartet, not remotely rock and roll) See Martha Redbone above for several individual songs.
Robert Burns, general responses	Hugh Morrison, Robert Burns Rocks
Robert Burns, “My Heart’s in the Highlands”	Bob Dylan, “Highlands“
George Gordon, Lord Byron	David Bowie, “Jazzin’ for Blue Jean“
George Gordon, Lord Byron, “So We’ll Go No More A-Roving”	Leonard Cohen, “So We’ll Go No More A-Roving“
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights	Kate Bush, “Wuthering Heights” Michael Penn, “No Myth“
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”	Iron Maiden, “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” Ian McKellen reading “Rime“
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Kubla Khan”	Rush, “Xanadu” Olivia Newton-John and ELO, “Xanadu“
John Keats, “Lamia”	Genesis, “The Lamia“
John Keats, “Ode on Melancholy”	Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds feat. Kylie Minogue, “Where the Wild Roses Grow“
Jack Kerouac, On the Road	The Waterboys, Modern Blues, especially “Long, Strange, Golden Road“
Edgar Allan Poe, Miscellaneous Poems	Jeff Buckley, “Ulalume” Marianne Faithfull, “Annabel Lee” Iggy Pop, “Tell Tale Heart” Lou Reed, The Raven Christopher Walken, “The Raven“
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein	Edgar Winter, “Frankenstein” (maybe more a reference to James Whales’s film?) Grateful Dead, “Ramble on Rose” New York Dolls, “Frankenstein“
Percy Shelley, “Adonais”	The Cure, “Adonais” Mick Jagger reading “Adonais” Vincent Price reading “Adonais” (Yes, Vincent Price is rock and roll — links appreciated if available)
Percy Shelley, The Masque of Anarchy	Scritti Polliti, “Lions After Slumber“
Percy Shelley, “Ozymandias”	Glass Hammer, “Ozymandias” Walter White/Heisenberg reading “Ozymandias” (he’s officially rock and roll now too) Vincent Price reading “Ozymandias“
Percy Shelley, “To a Skylark”	The Cure, liner notes to Disintegration
William Wordsworth, general responses	Joy Division, “Heart and Soul” Van Morrison, “Summertime in England” (with references to Coleridge, Yeats, and T.S. Eliot)
William Wordsworth, “My Heart Leaps Up”	Anton Corbjin, Control, reading of Wordsworth’s poem by Ian Curtis of Joy Division
William Butler Yeats, general responses	The Waterboys, An Appointment with Mr. Yeats, “September 1913” and others
William Butler Yeats, “The Stolen Child”	The Waterboys, “The Stolen Child“
References to Byron, Shelley, and Keats	Natasha Bedingfield, “These Words“
References to John Keats, William Butler Yeats, and Oscar Wilde	The Smiths, “Cemetry Gates“
“Romantic in tone, mood, or spirit”	The Clash John Denver The Dropkick Murphys Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited. See D.A. Pennebaker’s film Don’t Look Back Echo and the Bunnymen Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros Flogging Molly Genesis, Foxtrot King Crimson, In the Court of the Crimson King, In the Wake of Poseidon The Kinks, Arthur Led Zeppelin The Moody Blues, On the Threshold of a Dream and A Question of Balance Ritchie Blackmore’s Night Pink Floyd, The Wall: Film, Full Album, Soundtrack, Live  The Pogues, “Lorelei” Simon and Garfunkel The Tragically Hip, “Poets” The Waterboys, A Pagan Place, “A Church Not Made with Hands” The Who, Tommy, Quadrophenia, Who’s Next
The “New Romanticism” of the 1980s	Spandau Ballet

Partial Bibliography

General

Dettmar, Kevin. Is Rock Dead?  

Dettmar, Kevin. Think Rock. 

Dettmar, Kevin and Willem Richey. Reading Rock and Roll: Authenticity, Appropriation, Aesthetics. 1999.

Doughty, Howard. “Rock: A Nascent Protean Form.” Popular Music and Society 2.2 (1973).

Eisen, Jonathan. The Age of Rock: Sounds of the American Cultural Revolution (Random House) and The Age of Rock 2: Sights and Sounds of the American Cultural Revolution (Vintage Books).

Lewis, George H. Side Saddle on the Golden Calf: Social Structure and Popular Culture in America (Goodyear Pub. Co.).

Maddocks, Melvin. “The New Cult of Madness.” Time Magazine (March 13, 1972).

Marshall, Lee. “Metallica and Morality: The Rhetorical Battleground of the Napster Wars.” ESLJ 1.1 (2004).

Passmore, John. “Paradise Now: The Logic of the New Mysticism.” Encounter (November 1970). CIA funded source.

Prendergast, Mark. The Ambient Century – from Mahler to Moby, the Evolution of Sound in the Electronic Age (Bloomsbury, 2003)

Reynolds, Simon. “Ecstasy is a Science: Techno-Romanticism.” Stars Don’t Stand Still in the Sky: Music and Myth. Ed. Karen Kelly and Evelyn McDonnell. New York: New York UP, 1999. 199-205.

Ross, Alex. The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century.

Weinstein, Deena. “Art Versus Commerce: Deconstructing a (Useful) Romantic Illusion.” Stars Don’t Stand Still in the Sky: Music and Myth. Ed. Karen Kelly and Evelyn McDonnell. New York: New York UP, 1999. 57-69.

William Blake

Clark, Steve, Tristanne Connolly, and Jason Whittaker. Blake 2.0: William Blake in 20th-Century Art, Music, and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Nick Cave

Barfield, Steven, ‘ “The Time of Our Great Undoing”: Love, Madness, Catastrophe and the Secret Afterlife of Romanticism in Nick Cave’s Love Songs’, in John..H..Baker (ed.) The Art of Nick Cave: New Critical Essays (Bristol, UK. Intellect Book, 2012) 239-260.

Welberry, Karen. “Nick Cave and the Australian Language of Laughter.” Cultural Seeds: Essays on the Work of Nick Cave. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. 47-64.

The Doors/Jim Morrison

Paunovic, Zoran. Istorija, fikcija, mit (Geopoetika, Beograd 2006). In Serbian. Essay on Blake and Morrison.

Bob Dylan

Corcoran, Neil. Do You, Mr. Jones? Bob Dylan with the Poets and Professors. Chatto.
Dettmar, Kevin ed. The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan. 
Dylan, Bob. Chronicles. 2 volumes. Simon and Schuster.
Ricks, Christopher. Dylan’s Visions of Sin. Harper Perennial.

Mary Shelley

McCutcheon, Mark A. Techno, Frankenstein, and Copyright. Popular Music 26.2 (2007): 259-280.

Contributors
Hearty thanks to the following contributors to the list of works above, in alphabetical order:

Rick Albright
Ian Balfour
Suzanne Barnett
Rick Brenner
William Christopher Brown
Adriana Craciun
Kellie Donovan-Condran
Howard Doughty
John-Erik
Michael Falk
Neil Finlayson
Peter Francev
Sandy Gourlay
Gregory, Stephen
Arden Hegele
Joseph M. Johnson
Aaron Kaiserman
Rob Kilgore
C. Kimberly
Silvia Lombardini
Mark McCutcheon
Theresa McMillan
Terry Meyers
Richard Nanian
Aaron J. Ottinger
James Rovira
David Ruderman
Teresa Romero Sánchez-Herrero
Philip Shaw
Pamela Siska
Eugene Stelzig
Zinaida Taran
Chip Tucker
Ana Vukmanović
Sydney Waimsley
Julie Watt
Paul Yoder