The Myth of Popular Culture: From Dante to Dylan

by Perry Meisel

Overview

The Myth of Popular Culture

In this fascinating examination of popular culture, esteemed cultural critic Perry Meisel shatters conventionally held notions about the division between “high” and “low” culture with the provocative theory that popular culture has sustained dialectical rhythms. Meisel’s deft critical analysis of three enduring cultural traditions — the American novel, Hollywood, and British and American rock music — leads us to question the very concept of the division between “high” and “low” culture.

Meisel begins his engaging discussion by refuting philosopher Theodor Adorno’s assertion that “high” culture is “dialectical” and “pop” is not, showing that popular culture does indeed have a conversation both with its sources and with cultural authority as a whole. In the final section, Meisel turns his attention to Bob Dylan, a figure who, more than any other, shows what it means to synthesize and revise all traditions — music, poetry, iconography — and transform them completely.

Brilliantly conceived and clearly articulated, The Myth of Popular Culture from Dante to Dylan redefines the way in which we think about all forms of artistic expression.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781405199346
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	12/30/2009
Series:	Wiley-Blackwell Manifestos , #29
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Perry Meisel is Professor of English at New York University. His books include The Myth of the Modern (1987), The Cowboy and the Dandy (1999), and The Literary Freud (2007). He has also written widely for publications that include The Village Voice, The New York Times, Partisan Review, and October.

Table of Contents

Preface: The Resistance to Pop

Acknowledgments

Part I "The Battle of the Brows"

1. A History of High and Low

"Highbrow," "Lowbrow," "Middlebrow"

"Folk" and "Soul"

Dante’s Republic

"General Converse": Johnson and the Long Eighteenth Century

"Similitude in Dissimilitude"

Keats and Mediocrity

Culture and Anarchy in the UK

"The Battle of the Brows"

"Kitsch"

The Myth of Popular Culture

2. Pop Culture in the Spectator

Poems of the People

Canons and "Camp"

Base and Superstructure, Soma and Psyche

3. Pop and Postmodernism

The Social Self

Andy Warhol

"Hey, Rapunzel, Let Down Your Hair"

Part II Dialectics of Pop

4. The Death of Kings: American Fiction from Cooper to Chandler

"Paleface" and "Redskin," Cowboy and Dandy

Pathfinding: Cooper and Mark Twain

Labor, Leisure, Love: Melville, James, Hemingway

Transatlantic: Raymond Chandler

5. Knock on Any Door: Three Histories of Hollywood  

Ars Gratia Artis

Benjamin, Bazin, Eisenstein

Dialectics of Directing: Hawks, Welles, Scorsese

Dialectics of Acting: Barrymore, Bogart, Brando

Blonde on Blonde: Harlow and Monroe

Hang ’Em High: Welles, Lewis, Eastwood

6. The Blues Misreading of Gospel: A History of Rock and Roll

A Scandal in Bohemia

Jazz Myth, Jazz Reality

Soul Synthesis

Plugging In

Buddy Holly and the British Invasion

The Body English

Part III The World of Bob Dylan

7. Dylan and the Critics

Falling

The Limits of Typology

Dylan as Poet

8. Words and Music

Fractions

"Slippin’ and Slidin’"

Dylan and Deferred Action

9. Dylan Himself

The Death of the Author

The Grand Tour and the Middle Passage

Hortatory

10. The Three Icons: Sinatra, Presley, Dylan

Iconography and Gender

The Fedora as Phallus

Elvis as Bobbysoxer

"My Darling Young One"

Works Cited

Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Perry Meisel’s study of popular culture is a surprising enhancement of received opinion and common wisdom on that vexed subject. Moving from Shakespeare through Freud on to Bobby Dylan would seem something of a descent, yet Meisel provides a perspective that has its own descriptive justice. Even if I am not wholly persuaded that Dylan’s ultimate importance is as sublime as Meisel ventures it to be, I am given much here to intrigue me.”
—Harold Bloom

“Perry Meisel has written a boundary-smashing critique of the myth that popular culture is distinct from and inferior to the fine arts.”
—Richard Goldstein, Hunter College of the City University of New York

"... stunning in its originality, breadth, erudition, and in its understanding of the transatlantic evolution of popular culture."
—Josephine G. Hendin, New York University