Pop Songs and Poetry: Theory and Analysis

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This course is based on the following textbook: Helen Vendler. Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology. Third edition. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009 (ISBN-10: 0312463197). In three respects we shall amplify Vendler’s book: First, by reading some of the theory on the lyric by literary theorists such as Jonathan Culler, Barbara Johnson, Veronica Forrest-Thomson, Jan de Roder, and others. As an academic, you must learn to read literary theory from firsthand sources. Second, by applying all of the chapters of Vendler’s book to modern songs. Songs are also poems, although they are never considered in the conventional histories of poetry and in lyric theory. This is a strange omission, for not only do the “lyrics” of songs show all properties of poetry, the music of the song can also be seen as an exteriorization or enhancement of the musical element of language, emphasized in “regular” poetry through the use of rhyme, rhythm, structure, and images. The lack of attention to the pop song in books on poetry makes these books a bit outdated. Aim of this course is to give the theory of poetry a new life, by reconnecting it with the song. Finally we will amplify Vendler’s book by focusing on gender, ethnicity and sexuality as relevant categories of analysis in the study of poetry and song. There are significant differences in the ways in which male and female poets and singers express themselves: differences in themes, in the intertextual universes poets/singers choose to position themselves, in the use of genre, in forms of addressing the reader. We will address the question how gender, ethnicity and sexuality could be integrated into the theory of the lyric.