Rock and Romanticism: Palgrave Preface and Intro, Ch. 1

The Preface and Introduction (Ch. 1) to Rock and Romanticism: Post-Punk, Goth, and Metal as Dark Romanticisms: “Theorizing Rock/Historicizing Romanticism” James Rovira. Twitter @jamesrovira. Check out his iTunes profile.

• Chapter summary
  • James Rovira’s Preface (pp. vii-ix) and Introduction, Ch. 1 (pp. 1-25) 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. His discussion then continues into an examination of the relationship between Gothic and Romantic literature, which leads to the claim that John Milton was not just a source of inspiration for English Romantic poets but was himself the first English Romantic poet (thus, “seventeenth- through nineteenth-century” Romanticisms referenced above rather than just “eighteenth- and nineteenth-century”). After that, Rovira provides chapter summaries. Within these chapter summaries, he engages some of the issues related to the female Gothic as they arise in chapter discussions.
• Music (this playlist excludes mention of artists or songs discussed in other chapters)
  • Ludwig van Beethoven, “Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67: I. Allegro con brio”
  • Daniel Amos, “William Blake“
  • The Doors, “End of the Night“
  • Bob Dylan
    • 1965 Newport Festival
    • “Every Grain of Sand”
  • Emerson, Lake & Palmer, “Jerusalem“
  • The Fugs
    • “Ah, Sunflower, Weary of Time”
    • “Auguries of Innocence”
  • Iron Maiden, “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
  • The Kinks, “You Really Got Me”
  • Led Zeppelin, “Communication Breakdown”
  • Martha Redbone Roots Project, “A Poison Tree“
  • MC5, “Kick Out the Jams”
  • Patti Smith, “My Blakean Year“
  • U2
    • “Beautiful Ghost / Introduction to Songs of Experience”
    • Songs of Innocence
    • Songs of Experience
  • Venom, “Black Metal”
• Literature
  • Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
  • Byron, response to a review of Manfred by Goethe in an October 17, 1820 letter to Murray.
  • Rousseau.
  • E.T.A Hoffman on Beethoven’s 5th. Steven Cassedy’s “Beethoven the Romantic: How E.T.A. Hoffman Got It Right” is very helpful in understanding Hoffman’s writing on Beethoven. Just a question: if rock is Romanticism, and if Beethoven’s 5th inaugurated Romanticism in music, was Beethoven’s 5th the first appearance of rock?
  • Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
  • The Schlegels, from The Athenaeum
  • Mario Praz, The Romantic Agony 
  • Freud, Collected Works
  • Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety (Dread in an earlier translation)
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost
  • Percy Shelley, A Defence of Poetry
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Rime of the Ancient Mariner“
  • John Keats
  • Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
  • Edgar Allan Poe
  • Baudelaire
  • Swinburne
  • Novalis
  • Goethe
• Get the iTunes playlist