1.9 What Taylor Swift and Robert Browning Have in Common
Welcome back to The Community Library! I’m very excited to bring you this week’s episode, which is all about pop/country icon Taylor Swift and mid-19th-century poet Robert Browning. In this episode I discuss the parallels between Browning’s 1842 poem My Last Duchess and Swift’s 2014 hit Blank Space. I had lots of fun creating this episode, and I hope you enjoy!
Listen to the episode here
Download the full transcription here
Our next discussion pick is The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry!
Here are links to free audiobook versions:
Some links to things I talked about in the episode:
My Last Duchess by Robert Browning
Blank Space by Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift talking about how and why she wrote Blank Space
Robert Browning’s Blank Space – British Literature 1700-1900, A Course Blog
“My Last Duchess” and “Blank Space” – Later English Literature
@antipodean.books on Instagram
Other books mentioned:
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling
Claudine in Paris by Colette
Flush by Virginia Woolf
Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kästner
Further resources:
#poetry by Ariel Bissett – a documentary that asks the question: “Can Instagram make poetry cool again?”
Note: Unfortunately I couldn’t find a free online version of Robert Langbaum’s paper, however I believe it is printed in Robert Browning’s Poetry, Norton Critical Edition (Second Edition). The paper I talked about is: The Dramatic Monologue: Sympathy vs. Judgement by Robert Langbaum (1957).
Cover artwork is by Ashley Ronning
Ashley’s Instagram, website, and printing studio website
Featured image is from wikidata.org