Swifterature: A Love Story: English Literature and Taylor Swift

by Elly McCausland, Shakira Shute (Read by)

Overview

A daring literary fusion of pop culture and feminism, Swifterature captures the special connection between English literature and the worldwide phenomenon of Taylor Swift.

Swifterature captures a unique fusion of different elements: fandom, feminism, and a defense of both literature and popular culture.

The narrative is split into thirteen chapters that use Swift's lyrics as departure points. The reader experiences the inspiring influence of English literature as Swift’s lens breathes new vitality and urgency into older texts. McCausland also writes about her own experiences as she copes with intense media scrutiny and is forced to defend her academic integrity.

She argues that Swift, through her self-conscious engagement with classic works of literature and her extraordinary popularity, invites us to reflect not only on the culture of our past but also of our present. Swifterature shows how Swift’s place on the world’s stage can teach us about many things, from feminism to politics, nature to childhood. In the process the book makes a compelling case that studying Taylor Swift also turns us into better readers, not only of literature but of ourselves and each other.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798228659360
Publisher:	Tantor
Publication date:	11/04/2025
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 5.70(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Shakira Shute is a trained actress/voice actor and alumna of the internationally acclaimed National Youth Theatre. She has been recording audiobooks for the past two years. With her background in theater (Soho Theatre, Lyric Hammersmith), Shakira brings passion and authenticity to each performance. She is able to perform character voices and multiple UK regional accents, as well as American and Australian accents.

Editorial Reviews

A piercing look at an undeniable phenomenon through a literary lens. Each chapter dives into a different literary genre or conceit, tying Swift’s songs to classic works of literature. This relentlessly smart book serves as the perfect introduction to literary theory for Swift’s fans, as well as a fascinating exploration of the pop-music phenomenon to outside observers––you don’t need to be a Swiftie to enjoy it (though it can’t hurt). Enchanting.

Kirkus Reviews (starred)

★ 2025-05-28
A piercing look at an undeniable phenomenon through a literary lens.

English literature professor McCausland learned the hard way that haters are going to hate, hate, hate, hate, hate when, in 2023, journalists caught wind of her plans to teach a Taylor Swift–themed seminar at Ghent University in Belgium. Her class was met with ridicule on the internet, and she received messages calling her “a moron, an idiot, a ‘big bitch,’ and a stupid woman.” Her book, she writes, is “the result of a massive free association exercise that has been going on in my head since 2006” and seeks “to make historical English (by which I mean Anglophone) literature as relevant, accessible, and interesting to as wide an audience as possible” using Swift’s lyrics as inspiration. Each chapter dives into a different literary genre or conceit, tying Swift’s songs to classic works of literature. In one, she discusses the dismissal of Swift’s success by would-be cultural guardians, comparing their disdain to the 19th-century scorning of novels popular among women: “The implication is that women and girls just cannot be trusted with culture. We take it too far. We become obsessive and emotional.” Other chapters deal with Swift as a poet, making use of conceits like anacoluthon (“when a speaker abruptly changes course”) and apostrophe (“a spontaneous exclamation directed at an absent person or an object”); the concept of the antihero (which is the title of one of Swift’s most beloved songs); and themes of grief and madness. McCausland discusses an impressive array of past writers: Aphra Behn, Laurence Sterne, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, to name a few. This relentlessly smart book serves as the perfect introduction to literary theory for Swift’s fans, as well as a fascinating exploration of the pop-music phenomenon to outside observers—you don’t need to be a Swiftie to enjoy it (though it can’t hurt).

Even if you’re a Swift aficionado, you’ll learn a lot from this enchanting book.

Kirkus Reviews