SWIFTERATURE

A piercing look at an undeniable phenomenon through a literary lens.

English literature professor McCausland learned the hard way that haters are going to hate, hate, hate, hate, hate when, in 2023, journalists caught wind of her plans to teach a Taylor Swift–themed seminar at Ghent University in Belgium. Her class was met with ridicule on the internet, and she received messages calling her “a moron, an idiot, a ‘big bitch,’ and a stupid woman.” Her book, she writes, is “the result of a massive free association exercise that has been going on in my head since 2006” and seeks “to make historical English (by which I mean Anglophone) literature as relevant, accessible, and interesting to as wide an audience as possible” using Swift’s lyrics as inspiration. Each chapter dives into a different literary genre or conceit, tying Swift’s songs to classic works of literature. In one, she discusses the dismissal of Swift’s success by would-be cultural guardians, comparing their disdain to the 19th-century scorning of novels popular among women: “The implication is that women and girls just cannot be trusted with culture. We take it too far. We become obsessive and emotional.” Other chapters deal with Swift as a poet, making use of conceits like anacoluthon (“when a speaker abruptly changes course”) and apostrophe (“a spontaneous exclamation directed at an absent person or an object”); the concept of the antihero (which is the title of one of Swift’s most beloved songs); and themes of grief and madness. McCausland discusses an impressive array of past writers: Aphra Behn, Laurence Sterne, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, to name a few. This relentlessly smart book serves as the perfect introduction to literary theory for Swift’s fans, as well as a fascinating exploration of the pop-music phenomenon to outside observers—you don’t need to be a Swiftie to enjoy it (though it can’t hurt).

Even if you’re a Swift aficionado, you’ll learn a lot from this enchanting book.