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The University of Texas is offering a class on the songs of Taylor Swift
English Professor Elizabeth Scala informed CNN that she picked Swift as a result of the pop star writes her personal music and her lyrics will help illuminate related methods from traditional poetry.
“This can be a course on her songs as literary writing and the methods a well-liked and award-winning author makes use of the identical literary gadgets, figures, and tropes of conventional poetry in her work,” she mentioned. “It’s not about movie star or fame.”
College students will research Swift’s songs alongside the writings of Western literature greats.
“They’re going to be requested to research and contextualize widespread practices and issues throughout the centuries,” Scala mentioned.
Scala is a self-described Swift fan and mentioned her aim is to show literary traditions by means of a recent lens.
“I need to take what Swift followers can already do at a complicated stage, tease it out for them a bit with a special vocabulary, after which present them how, in reality, Swift attracts on richer literary traditions in her songwriting, each topically but in addition formally when it comes to how she makes use of references, metaphors, and intelligent manipulations of phrases,” Scala mentioned.
“I will be exhibiting college students that these operations and interpretive strikes one makes when studying her songs are applicable to all types of writing.”
The category will principally give attention to songs from Swift’s latest albums, however college students are free to deliver up older songs for dialogue, Scala mentioned. With a lot of the lyrics posted on-line and the songs accessible on Apple Music or Spotify, college students haven’t got to purchase music for the category, she mentioned.
The course additionally will deal with matters reminiscent of gender, authenticity, followers’ affect on artists and writers, and the way language historical past and linguistic traditions enrich the studying expertise, Scala mentioned.
“I believe it is necessary to attach the curriculum to the current, however I am not keen to cede the previous. That is my method of sneaking the older materials again in with relevance,” she added.