Chapter 7, Rock and Romanticism, Lexington Books

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Chapter 7 of Rock and Romanticism: Blake, Wordsworth, and Rock from Dylan to U2 is “‘When the Light that’s Lost within Us Reaches the Sky’: Jackson Browne’s Romantic Vision,” pp. 95-110, by Gary L. Tandy, Chair and Professor of the English and Theater Departments, George Fox University.

“‘When the Light that’s Lost within Us Reaches the Sky’: Jackson Browne’s Romantic Vision” by Gary Tandy evaluates Jackson Browne’s music against the taxonomy provided by Löwy and Sayre in Romanticism Against the Tide of Modernity (2001) to argue that Browne is indeed a twentieth-century American Romantic poet. Exploring the themes of rejection of contemporary society, nostalgia for paradise lost, and a vision of paradise regained, Tandy sees in Browne’s musical career alternations between revolutionary and utopian Romantic anti-capitalisms. Browne rejects current socio-economic structures in his longing for a lost world, but at the same time actively advocates for change through a clearly defined agenda that he seeks to see materially and politically realized in his lifetime. Tandy’s compelling comparisons of Browne’s work to Wordsworth’s not only support his argument that Browne is a Romantic poet, but point out significant influence and identify Browne as an American reinvention of Wordsworth.

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• Songs (note: several songs are discussed more than once, but are listed in the order in which they first appear in the chapter in this playlist).
  • For Everyman
    • 1. “For Everyman”
    • 7. “Our Lady of the Well”
    • 8. “Colors of the Sun”
    • 18. “These Days”
  • I’m Alive
    • 21. “Too Many Angels”
  • Late for the Sky
    • 2. “Before the Deluge”
    • 9. “Farther On”
    • 19. “Fountain of Sorrow”
  • Lawyers in Love
    • 10. “Lawyers in Love”
    • 11. “Tender is the Night”
  • Lives in the Balance
  • Looking East
    • 12. “Looking East”
    • 22. “The Barricades of Heaven”
  • The Naked Ride Home
    • 14. “About My Imagination”
    • 25. “Don’t You Want to be There”
  • The Pretender
    • 4. “The Pretender”
    • 20. “Linda Paloma”
    • 23. “The Fuse”
  • Running on Empty
    • 3. “Running on Empty”
  • Saturate Before Using  (Jackson Browne)
    • 5. “From Silver Lake”
    • 6. “Rock Me on the Water”
    • 13. “Looking into You”
    • 16. “A Child in these Hills”
    • 17. “Song for Adam”
  • Standing in the Breach
    • 27. “Standing in the Breach”
  • Time the Conqueror
    • 15. “Off of Wonderland”
    • 26. “Far from the Arms of Hunger”
  • World in Motion
    • 24. “World in Motion”
• Literature
  • John Keats, “Ode on Melancholy,” “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn“
  • William Blake, Milton a Poem, “The Chimney Sweeper” (I), “The Chimney Sweeper” (E)
  • William Wordsworth, “Michael,” “The World is Too Much With Us,”  “Ode: Intimations of Immortality,” “Sweet Was the Walk,” the Lucy poems, “We Are Seven“