Literary Taylor Swift

Betsy Winakur Tontiplaphol is Professor of English at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, USA, where she specializes in 19th-century British literature, particularly Romantic poetry. In addition to numerous essays, she is the author of Poetics of Luxury in the Nineteenth Century: Keats, Tennyson, and Hopkins (2011) and The Pointe of the Pen: Nineteenth-Century Poetry and the Balletic Imagination (2021).Anastasia Klimchynskaya is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois, USA. She specializes in 19th-century literature in its intersections with science, technology, and the cultural imagination, and has published widely on "popular" genres such as detective, Gothic, and science fiction.

• Introduction: Blank Spaces, Fresh Pages: Taylor Swift and/as LiteratureBetsy Tontiplaphol, Trinity University, USA, and Anastasia Klimchynskaya, Loyola University Chicago, USAPart 1: All of the Books Beside Your Bed: Engaging the Literary-Historical Canon1. “I haven’t met the new me yet”: folklore/evermore and Taylor Swift’s Self-Fashioned RenaissanceDevori Kimbro, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, USA2. Big Reputation: Reading Taylor Swift and/with 18th-Century Women WritersBridget Donnelly, Middle Tennessee State University, USA3. “Just to break me like a promise”: Taylor Swift as Romantic HeroineRita J. Dashwood, Edge Hill University, UK4. “What are my 'Wordsworth'?”: Taylor Swift’s New RomanticismBrittany Reid, Thompson Rivers University, Canada, and Taylor McKee, Brock University, Canada 5. Baby, We're the Late Romantics: Taylor Swift and the English BiedermeierBetsy Winakur Tontiplaphol, Trinity University, USA 6. Modernist Intertextualities in folklore and evermoreJennifer Smith, North Central College, Illinois, USAPart 2: Every Version of Yourself Tonight: Examining Gender, Sexuality, and Race7. The Death of the Pop Auteur: Taylor Swift’s Feminist Politics of Collaboration and RevisionStephen Grandchamp, University of Maine at Farmington, USA8. “No one likes a mad woman”: The Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Trope and/as Feminist Resistance in Taylor Swift’s Music and MythologyRyanne Kap, University of Calgary, Canada9. Female Millennial Rage: The Weaponization of CottagecoreKatherine Murray, Independent Scholar10. “She would’ve made such a lovely bride”: Queer Anxieties on folklore and evermoreErin Geary, Independent Scholar11. What It Means to Shake It Off: Taylor Swift, Race, and CitizenshipShaun Cullen, Independent ScholarPart 3: Time, Curious Time: (Re-)Writing Memory12. “Time, curious time”: Memory, Agency, and Elastic Temporality in Taylor SwiftMiranda Steege, University of California, Riverside, USA13. “Say you’ll remember me … all too well”: Taylor Swift’s Mobilizing and Monopolizing Memory WorkMaggie Laurel Boyd, Boston University, USA14. “Scrap[s] of you”: Textures of Loss in Swift’s folklore and evermore Claire Hurley, University of Kent, UK15. "The corner I haunt": Trauma, Time, and Space in Taylor Swift's Post-Hiatus OeuvreCarolin Isabel Steiner, Hochschule Mittweida, GermanyPart 4: This Ain’t a Fairy Tale: Considering Craft, Genre, and Mediation16. Show, Don’t Tell? How Taylor Swift Does Both and Complicates a Writing ClichéSamantha Bañal, Independent Scholar17. "I never knew I could feel that much": Taylor Swift's Recuperative Aesthetics of ExcessAnastasia Klimchynskaya, Loyola University Chicago, USA18. The Paradox of Defamiliarization and Hyperfamiliarity in Taylor Swift’s SongwritingMargrét Ann Thors, University of Iceland19. “This is me trying”: Autofiction and Taylor SwiftMaria Juko, University of Hamburg, Germany20. (Taylor’s Version): Authenticity and Aura in Taylor Swift’s Re-RecordingsMeghan Kuehnle, The Ohio State University, USAContributors Index

Taylor Swift’s artistic and commercial success has not just impacted the language of music, but language itself. This far-reaching volume approaches the superstar from every angle to assess the way Swift reflects and shapes literary culture—and why it matters not just to fans, but to everyone with a voice and a pen.