Thanks to the North American Society for Studies in Romanticism (NASSR) for accepting the talk outlined below for the Romantic Insurrections / Counter-insurrections conference at Georgetown U, upcoming this August ’24:
The talk I propose builds on James Rovira’s work on Romanticism in rock music, and on Orrin C. Wang’s critical methodology of “techno-magism,” to read selected texts, creative practices, and media representations of William Blake and Letitia Elizabeth Landon (“LEL”) in relation to those of the US rock band Heart (1971-). Heart’s songwriting shows both Blakean and Landonesque aesthetics, including the former’s Miltonic Satanism and the latter’s ironic, feminist-inflected romanticism, which I theorize as aesthetics of the “delineation of desire,” to misquote Blake. And misquoting’s material to my argument: both the self-referentiality and intensive intertextuality of Blake and LEL resonate throughout Heart’s productions and performances. Initially dismissed as “Lady Zeppelin” (Wilson & Wilson 2012), inducted to Rock’s Hall of Fame in 2012, and now touring, Heart has enjoyed a remarkably long-lived rock career, partly owing, I suggest, to their unique relationship to and inventive management of their intellectual property. Such careful management the band shares with Blake in his period; and if in this Heart contrasts with LEL, then the common fame of these innovative women creatives in the “man’s world” (Brown) of modern cultural industries is common pain and shame we also know—and so must critique—all too well.
The talk’s title quotes “Heartless” from Magazine (1978)
Works cited and consulted
Blake, William. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Brown, James. “It’s a man’s man’s man’s world.” It’s a New Day–So Let a Man Come In (UMG, 1970)
Grossberg, “Re-placing popular culture” in The Clubcultures Reader, ed. Steve Redhead
Heart, Dreamboat Annie (1975); Little Queen (1976); Heart (1985); Fanatic (2012); Beautiful Broken (2016)
LEL, Selected Works, ed McGann et al.
McClary, Susan. “Same as it ever was.”
Rovira, Women in Rock, Women in Romanticism
Wang, Techno-Magism
Wilson and Wilson, Kicking and Dreaming: A Story of Heart, Soul & Rock & Roll
Academicalism 