A ROMANTIC CIRCLES RESOURCE
This bibliography lists 20th-century popular culture renditions, mostly pop song versions, of literature from the Romantic Period. This bibliography is is part of an array of related bibliographies including "Fictional Representations of Romantics and Romanticism" and "Responses to and Adaptations of Frankenstein".
The following list was generated by the NASSR-L Discussion List in January 2009:
Pop
Classical
These entries were generated by the NASSR-L Discussion List during October 1999:
Bruce Dickinson, Chemical
Wedding (1998): "The Book of Thel," "Jerusalem," "Gates
of Urizen."
Bruce Dickinson , who used to be the lead singer for Iron
Maiden in the 80s, has released several solo albums since;
his Chemical Wedding has a LOT of Blake references on
it; one song is called "The Book of Thel" and there are a
couple others [including "Jerusalem" and "Gates of Urizen"]
that are direct references to Blake. Might be worth a look
for those of us interested in pop-cultural representations of
Romanticism.--Gord Barentsen.
The Fugs, The Fugs First
Album (1965):"Oh, Sunflower," "How Sweet I Roamed from
Field to Field"; Refuse to Be Burnt Out (1984): "How
Sweet"; The Real Woodstock Festival (1995): "How
Sweet," "Auguries of Innocence," "Nurse's Song"; Live from
the 60's (1995): "Homage to Catherine and William
Blake."
Don't forget the Fugs ' recording of the Songs of
Innocence and Experience (1974ish?) --Darby Lewes.
On The Fugs First Album, rec. 1965 (tho I have some
later reissue), they have not only Ed Sanders' tom-tom or
bongo-backed setting for "Oh, Sunflower," but also "How Sweet
I Roamed from Field to Field," that one done in a hilariously
lugubrious Country/Western/yodelling setting. It works! Great
group: too bad they couldn't carry a tune.--Carol
McGuirk.
Yes, "Ah Sunflower" and "How Sweet I Roam'd" on The Fugs
First Album; a new version of "How Sweet" -- with a new
singer with a beautiful set of pipes, Steve Taylor-- appears
on their 1984 live reunion album, Refuse to Be Burnt
Out, and another version on The Real Woodstock
Festival (1995) -- which latter also contains their
"Auguries of Innocence" and "Nurse's Song." On their Live
from the 60's (1995) you'll find "Homage to Catherine and
William Blake." They've also set poems by Swinburne ("Before
the Beginning of Years") and Matthew Arnold ("Dover Beach").
So if your interest runs toward pornographic discordant
atonal folk-rock, they're your band.--Jack Lynch.
Allen Ginsberg, with Steven Taylor
and Heather Hardy, Ginsberg Sings Blake: Songs of
Innocence and Experience (Thin Air Video, 1998).
There's a similarly hilarious yet "it works!" recording of
selected Songs of I & E from about the same period
by Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky--Ginsberg claimed Blake
gave him the original tunes in a vision (or so I remember the
jacket copy saying, back in 1973 when I lived in a house on
Haight & Laguna that had this album in its group
collection). Does anyone own this? I would *love* to have a
tape--I just checked amazon.com and it doesn't come up. BTW
this recording made such an impression on me that I can sing
many of the tunes some 25 years later. . . . By chance, the
New Yorker that just arrived has a piece on the
auction of some of Allen Ginsberg's personal effects, with
special attention to his harmonium (and mention of his Blake
settings). It says that "Steven Taylor" was Ginsberg's main
musical collaborator--is this the same as the neo-Fugs' Steve
Taylor? If so, that's a nice tangle for our thread.--Alan
Richardson.
The same. The Fugs have often played with Ginsberg, and
include a setting of (selections from) Howl on one of
their early albums (well before Taylor joined them). Taylor's
angelic tenor is a bizarre contrast to Ginsberg's voice and
the cacaphony generated by the rest of the Fugs. I remember
seeing Ginsberg and Taylor together in the late eighties,
singing Ginsberg's setting of many of Blake's songs to the
accompaniment of a harmonium.--Jack Lynch.
A video of Ginsberg performing his Blake settings, with
Steven Taylor and Heather Hardy (electric violin), entitled
Ginsberg Sings Blake: Songs of Innocence and
Experience, contains more than two dozen of the Songs
(Thin Air Video).--Melissa Sites.
It is probably not surprising that, among
romantic poets, Blake has been especially popular with rock
musicians. Bruce Dickinson's Chemical Wedding
includes settings of several Blake lyrics, and Jah
Wobble's Inspiration of William Blake does, as
well. Van Morrison and Billy Bragg have
included Blake among their lyrics, and folk-rock musician
Greg Brown has issued Songs of Innocence and
Experience, as did Allen Ginsberg some years ago.
The most ambitious such project is the Norwegian rock artist,
Finn Coren's 2-cd album, The Blake Project. He
has continued to set more Blake material, and has a Yeats
album out, as well, with another Yeats set on the way. I have
been negotiating with the manager of our campus radio station
to put together a show (or series of shows) about settings of
Blake--it would be fairly easy to do an hour just on settings
of "The Tyger," but I would prefer a wider variety, to
include Britten, Vaughan Williams, etc., if possible.
It sound 'too ambitious' to the radio guy, but . . . Tom
Dillingham.
Van Morrison's Blake is quite lovely.--John
Isbell.
Tangerine Dream's album Tyger [import] has various Blake songs on it.--Timothy Morton.
Speaking of Pop-culture and rock versions of 19th-Century British literature, do people remember Kate Bush's version of Wuthering Heights? That always helped me to understand the appeal that book has for so many undergraduates (although I'm more a Jane Eyreperson myself). Bush's ethereal voice on the early album, "Kick Inside" worked quite well as a ghostly Cathy demanding to be let back in the window. I'm wondering whether people have ever used these renditions in class to talk about issues of interpretation or the forms interpretation might take? I've never used them myself, though I sometimes mention their existence as a way to suggest that this stuff isn't so high culture and distant as it sometimes feels to some students. Any thoughts about the pedagogical potentials here?--Miriam Wallace.
Leonard Cohen, Dear Heather (2004). Track: "Go No More A-Roving"
Nick
Bantock, Kubla Khan pop-up book (out of print:
Viking Penguin/Intervisual Books, Inc., 1994).
Nick Bantock, author of the Griffin and Sabine series,
has put together a beautifully realized little book in
G&S style. Some of the --what's the word?
Representations, I guess-- are haunting.--Megan
O'Neill.
The pop-up book is cool--very dark.--Steven Jones.
A pop-up version of "Kubla Khan" is a great idea! I just
finished talking with students about the effect of the verb
"decree" in the second line -- the way it makes the dome seem
to spring up by itself, without builders, almost as an effect
of language. If I had only had the pop-up version of the text
in hand!--Ted Underwood.
As Steve mentions, the pop-up book has a very dark palette,
as well as a dark atmosphere featuring images like bats,
skulls and bat-winged pteradactyl-like skeletons. The pop-up
dome that erects itself on the opening page is impressive. On
the closing page is another dome that the reader erects, for
a nice touch.--Melissa Sites.
Hunt
Emerson, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, comic
version (Knockabout).
Do we all know about the comic book version of Rime?
It's a lovely, lovely parody, complete with an albatross that
just won't die--it keeps climbing back up the side of the
ship. Reminds me of R Crumb in a way--not that it's that
violent but in its drawing.--Megan O'Neill.
The comic book is by Hunt Emerson, who tells me it was
inspired by MAD magazine parodies. It's brilliant. A few
pages of it are available online as illustrations to a recent
article by me, published in *Romanticism on the Net*:
http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/1999/v/n15/005872ar.html
Also, it's out in a new edition in London (Knockabout
Comics). Knockabout also has an efficient Website where you
can order it [paper and hardback versions; look in their
catalogue under "e" for "Emerson"]. http://www.knockabout.com/
--Steven E. Jones.
Iron
Maiden, Powerslave (1984): Rime of the Ancient
Mariner.
This will be old news to those 80's Hard Rock afficionados on
the list, but the group Iron Maiden recorded a version of
Rime of the Ancient Mariner on their Powerslave
album in 1984. While I'm not a big Iron Maiden fan, this
recording was fascinating to hear, and some of you might find
it a useful tool in the classroom. I guess it was fascinating
because of the contextualization the music brought to the
words--I really can't describe it. The music has a rock opera
sound that reminded me of Jesus Christ Superstar. It
gave the poem a sort of science-fiction/fantasy feel as well.
I'm not used to writing about music, so it's difficult for me
to characterize--you're just going to have to go to the mall
and sample the song for yourself. Pick up a black light while
you're at the record store (that dates me)--I think it will
enhance your listening experience).--Robert C. Hale.
Maybe it would have helped if you'd have seen them perform
the song live, which I have three times. They really got into
treating this poem with lots of special effects, fog and a
great bass solo. In fact Iron Maiden are the reason I got
into Romantic poetry at all. After seeing the song live for
the first time, and then listening to it on the album
Powerslave, I went and got the actual poem, and from
then on, I've been a die-hard Romantic. Although my tastes
now run more along the lines of Byron and Shelley, and tend
to agree with Byron about Coleridge, The Rime is
responsible for my getting into British Literature in
general.--Smokincat Jerrybear.
Okay, I can't hold off blurting this out any longer...perhaps this is because I'm one of the few Canadians around here, but hasn't anyone else heard Rush's legendary Xanadu recorded in the 70s?--Gord Barentsen.
The Wordsworth Trust issued a catalogue of its bicentenary exhibit at the Dove Cottage museum on STC's Rime, which includes some of the Hunt illustrations as well as samples from many other 19th-20th century illustrators and artists. The catalogue is The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: The Poem and Its Illustrators, eds. Robert Woof and Stephen Hebron. The Wordsworth Trust, 1997. Mervyn Peake's illustrations in particular are the stuff nightmares are made on.--Richard Matlak.
The Cure, B-side to "The 13th"
(1996 single): Shelley's Adonais.
For an unexpected musical setting of Shelley's
Adonais, see the B-side to The Cure's 1996
single "The 13th." The cd has a wind-up panda on the front. A
great song very much worth hearing. Additionally, the
linernotes for their 1992 cd Wish featured the "We
look before and after" stanza from "To a Skylark."--James
Alexander.
Krysia Kristian,
The Tyger and Other Tales, (somewhat new-age-y and
flimsy for my taste) includes "La Belle Dame,""Ozymandias,"
"Lady of Shalott," among others.--Tom
Dillingham.
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