As good as Shakespeare? Belgium college students’ love story with Taylor Swift
7 min readBy AFP
GHENT: A hubbub grips the category within the Belgian metropolis of Ghent as college college students eagerly focus on whether or not US pop star Taylor Swift is a “literary genius”.
The query elicits passionate responses from college students, and it is an train their professor hopes will enliven their engagement with extra conventional figures of the English Literature canon.
The course is amongst a handful which have popped up at universities world wide as pop titan Swift has racked up hits and awards and as her Eras Tour is predicted to set a report for the primary billion-dollar tour.
“To read her lyrics without the context of the song, it can feel like poetry,” one pupil says after the instructor opens the ground to dialogue.
Another pupil pipes as much as counsel it is too quickly to say Swift, 33, has had the identical cultural influence as William Shakespeare, identified world wide for a lot of centuries. While Shakespeare wrote at the very least 38 performs, Swift has recorded 10 albums.
Some will surprise what Shakespeare and his friends share in frequent with as we speak’s greatest US singer-songwriter.
Well, they’re all the topic of Elly McCausland’s course known as “Literature (Taylor’s Version)” for Master’s diploma college students at Ghent University, which is able to run till the tip of the 12 months.
During the primary class on Monday, assistant professor McCausland piqued the scholars’ curiosity with controversial questions, together with why sure authors and literature are thought-about timeless, whereas different books will not be valued the identical approach.
McCausland’s purpose? To make literature extra accessible.
“I’d like to get people excited about literature, thinking about literature in a new way and realising that actually even literature from centuries and centuries ago still has something to add to our conversations,” she advised AFP on the class.
‘Swift is an actual poet’
The 10-session course will use Swift’s songs as references for themes and can deal with a collection of historic texts together with Charlotte Bronte’s Villette, lesser identified than Jane Eyre.
The course has proved widespread, with 61 college students signed up, twice as many as standard.
There are even college students from different elements of Belgium.
Zina Ringoot, 20, had realized simply hours earlier than that she may attend the course and made the 90-minute journey to Ghent from Antwerp within the northeast.
ALSO READ | Taylor Swift creates historical past as feminine artist with most No. 1 albums
“I’m a huge Taylor Swift fan,” stated Ringoot, an English literature Master’s pupil.
“I’m hoping to write my thesis on Taylor Swift’s album ‘folklore’ and how it connects to romanticism. So I thought I would get a lot out of this class.”
Not everybody within the class is a Swiftie, as her followers name themselves.
Joris Verschelde, 21, admitted he was “not that big of a fan” however wished to “see the connection between the songs and what we already learned” within the older texts.
Laughter usually fills the windowless auditorium, even if critical themes are on the agenda, together with feminism, sexism and misogyny.
When McCausland asks: “Who are the gatekeepers” of English literature, one pupil quips: “A bunch of old men!”
Even if critics reject comparisons with the canonical greats, Swift has followers even amongst Shakespeare consultants together with British educational Sir Jonathan Bate.
After attending a live performance throughout Swift’s record-breaking Eras tour, Bate wrote within the Sunday Times in April: “I came away with confirmation of a thought I first had 15 years ago: this isn’t just high-class showbiz, Taylor Swift is a real poet.”
Beyond Belgium
University programs Swift have been popping up world wide.
New York University’s Clive Davis Institute launched its first-ever course on Swift final 12 months, and Queen Mary University of London provided a summer season college this 12 months Swift by means of a literary lens.
In Arizona, PhD pupil Alexandra Wormley is internet hosting a course on the social psychology of Swift at Arizona State University this autumn.
Critics on-line and even some media pundits have contemplated simply what it’s about Swift that’s so interesting.
For Clio Doyle, a tutorial who hosted the summer season course at Queen Mary, “Swift is a really fascinating songwriter”.
The lecturer in early trendy literature added that one more reason she checked out Swift was due to her reputation and the discussions surrounding her work.
“A course about Swift would be an opportunity for students both to deepen their readings of Swift’s lyrics and to think about what it means to study something as literature,” Doyle, who runs a similarly-themed podcast about Swift, advised AFP.
The summer season course can be provided once more subsequent 12 months, and curiosity is just not restricted to the United States or Europe.
The University of Melbourne will host a three-day “Swiftposium” Swift’s cultural, financial and world influence in February 2024, the identical month her tour arrives in Australia.
GHENT: A hubbub grips the category within the Belgian metropolis of Ghent as college college students eagerly focus on whether or not US pop star Taylor Swift is a “literary genius”.
The query elicits passionate responses from college students, and it is an train their professor hopes will enliven their engagement with extra conventional figures of the English Literature canon.
The course is amongst a handful which have popped up at universities world wide as pop titan Swift has racked up hits and awards and as her Eras Tour is predicted to set a report for the primary billion-dollar tour.googletag.cmd.push(operate() googletag.show(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2′); );
“To read her lyrics without the context of the song, it can feel like poetry,” one pupil says after the instructor opens the ground to dialogue.
Another pupil pipes as much as counsel it is too quickly to say Swift, 33, has had the identical cultural influence as William Shakespeare, identified world wide for a lot of centuries. While Shakespeare wrote at the very least 38 performs, Swift has recorded 10 albums.
Some will surprise what Shakespeare and his friends share in frequent with as we speak’s greatest US singer-songwriter.
Well, they’re all the topic of Elly McCausland’s course known as “Literature (Taylor’s Version)” for Master’s diploma college students at Ghent University, which is able to run till the tip of the 12 months.
During the primary class on Monday, assistant professor McCausland piqued the scholars’ curiosity with controversial questions, together with why sure authors and literature are thought-about timeless, whereas different books will not be valued the identical approach.
McCausland’s purpose? To make literature extra accessible.
“I’d like to get people excited about literature, thinking about literature in a new way and realising that actually even literature from centuries and centuries ago still has something to add to our conversations,” she advised AFP on the class.
‘Swift is an actual poet’
The 10-session course will use Swift’s songs as references for themes and can deal with a collection of historic texts together with Charlotte Bronte’s Villette, lesser identified than Jane Eyre.
The course has proved widespread, with 61 college students signed up, twice as many as standard.
There are even college students from different elements of Belgium.
Zina Ringoot, 20, had realized simply hours earlier than that she may attend the course and made the 90-minute journey to Ghent from Antwerp within the northeast.
ALSO READ | Taylor Swift creates historical past as feminine artist with most No. 1 albums
“I’m a huge Taylor Swift fan,” stated Ringoot, an English literature Master’s pupil.
“I’m hoping to write my thesis on Taylor Swift’s album ‘folklore’ and how it connects to romanticism. So I thought I would get a lot out of this class.”
Not everybody within the class is a Swiftie, as her followers name themselves.
Joris Verschelde, 21, admitted he was “not that big of a fan” however wished to “see the connection between the songs and what we already learned” within the older texts.
Laughter usually fills the windowless auditorium, even if critical themes are on the agenda, together with feminism, sexism and misogyny.
When McCausland asks: “Who are the gatekeepers” of English literature, one pupil quips: “A bunch of old men!”
Even if critics reject comparisons with the canonical greats, Swift has followers even amongst Shakespeare consultants together with British educational Sir Jonathan Bate.
After attending a live performance throughout Swift’s record-breaking Eras tour, Bate wrote within the Sunday Times in April: “I came away with confirmation of a thought I first had 15 years ago: this isn’t just high-class showbiz, Taylor Swift is a real poet.”
Beyond Belgium
University programs Swift have been popping up world wide.
New York University’s Clive Davis Institute launched its first-ever course on Swift final 12 months, and Queen Mary University of London provided a summer season college this 12 months Swift by means of a literary lens.
In Arizona, PhD pupil Alexandra Wormley is internet hosting a course on the social psychology of Swift at Arizona State University this autumn.
Critics on-line and even some media pundits have contemplated simply what it’s about Swift that’s so interesting.
For Clio Doyle, a tutorial who hosted the summer season course at Queen Mary, “Swift is a really fascinating songwriter”.
The lecturer in early trendy literature added that one more reason she checked out Swift was due to her reputation and the discussions surrounding her work.
“A course about Swift would be an opportunity for students both to deepen their readings of Swift’s lyrics and to think about what it means to study something as literature,” Doyle, who runs a similarly-themed podcast about Swift, advised AFP.
The summer season course can be provided once more subsequent 12 months, and curiosity is just not restricted to the United States or Europe.
The University of Melbourne will host a three-day “Swiftposium” Swift’s cultural, financial and world influence in February 2024, the identical month her tour arrives in Australia.
