The Long and Winding Road from Blake to the Beatles

by Schneider, Matthew

• ISBN13: 9781403984890
• ISBN10: 1403984891
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-06-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

The story of the Beatles begins not with the rock-'n'-roll revolution of the 1950s, but in the Romantic revolution of the 1790s, when age-old notions about literature, politics, education, and social relations changed forever. Tracing the Beatles to their late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century poetic, musical, and philosophic roots, The Long and Winding Road from Blake to the Beatles weaves literary criticism and cultural analysis together to how the Fab Four'”in their songs, personalities, and relations with each other'”mirror the themes and history of Anglo-American Romanticism.

Author Biography

Matthew Schneider is Professor of English at Chapman University, California.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Introduction: Why the Beatles?	p. 1
The Transatlantic Roots of Rock Romanticism	p. 25
The Nowhere Man and Mother Nature's Son: Coleridge/Lennon-Wordsworth/McCartney and the Productivity of Resentment	p. 69
George Harrison and Byronic In-Between-ness	p. 99
Ringo Starr and the Anxiety of Romantic Childhood	p. 127
"What Matters is the System!" The Disappearance of God and the Rise of Conspiracy Theorizing	p. 153
Epilogue: A New British Empire	p. 179
Notes	p. 203
Bibliography	p. 217
Index	p. 223
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