Preface and Introduction, Rock and Romanticism, Lexington Books

Order the book from the publisher’s website.

The Preface and “Introduction: Rock and Romanticism” for Rock and Romanticism: Blake, Wordsworth, and Rock from Dylan to U2 is on pp. ix-xxiv and was written by James Rovira, Chair and Associate Professor of English, Mississippi College.

James Rovira’s Preface and Introduction to Rock and Romanticism describe the origins of this project, the difficulty in defining the term “Romanticism” in reference to British literature from Byron to the present, how Sayre and Löwy’s Romanticism Against the Tide of Modernity helps address these problems in a way supportive of this project, and the links between rock and Romanticism as they have surfaced in scholarship and other writing since the 1960s. After that, he provides chapter summaries.

iTunes playlist for the preface and introduction.

• Music
  • Bob Dylan, 1965 Newport Festival
  • The Fugs, “Ah, Sunflower, Weary of Time,” “Auguries of Innocence”
  • The Doors, “End of the Night“
  • Emerson, Lake & Palmer, “Jerusalem“
  • Daniel Amos, “William Blake“
  • Patti Smith, “My Blakean Year“
  • U2, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience
• Literature
  • Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
  • Byron, response to review of Manfred by Goethe in an October 17, 1820 letter to Murray.
• Cover image (cropped from above) by Taylor Fickes at FickesPhoto.com.