The Swiftie and The Scholar

We’re doing something a bit different today! Some conversations have popped up in various comment sections about why Uncle Jerry prefers specific types of poetry, and which lenses we use to dissect those poems, whether we’re talking about Charles Dickens, Emily Dickenson, or Taylor Swift. So Uncle Jerry put together a lecture explaining how and why he views certain poetic styles the way he does, and explains the different criticism styles and theories we use to understand a poem’s meaning and impact.

Hope you enjoy! Please leave any questions in the comments that he can answer either here or in a later episode. 

Works Cited:
Marxist Literary Criticism
Post-Colonial Criticism
Reader-response theory
Key Theories of Wolfgang Iser
Is There a Text in This Class? – Stanley Fish – Aff Link
Psychological Criticism
Feminist Theory
New Criticism
Felicia Dorothea Hemans
On the Intentional Fallacy
Hyperion – John Keats
Affective Fallacy
Queer Theory
Deconstruction
Semiotics
Critical Race Theory
New Historicism
Stephen Greenblatt and New Historicism
Sketches by Boz – Charles Dickens – Aff Link
Sonnets
Shakespeare's Sonnets & Poems – William Shakespeare – Aff Link
Limerick
Haiku
Ballad Meter (or Common Measure)
Villanelle
Concrete Poetry
Life Studies – Robert Lowell – Aff Link 
The Collected Poems – Sylvia Plath – Aff Link
My Papa’s Waltz – Theodore Roethke
The Real Slim Shady – Eminem
Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture Paperback – Dana Gioia – Aff Link
A Bit Much – Lyndsay Rush – Aff Link
Lyndsay Rush – Instagram
Amanda Gorman
The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix

Follow Us:
Patreon
⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠
⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠
⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠
Threads
⁠Angela’s Instagram⁠
Uncle Jerry’s Instagram

We are getting witchy today as we dive deep into The Prophecy from Taylor Swift’s 2024 album, The Tortured Poets Department. Uncle Jerry teaches us about some specific references to tarot and the occult in literature, and how that shaped a few of his interests. Angela tells the story of a tarot reading that Taylor received from a friend, and how she thinks it inspired this song.
  
Works Cited:
The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats – William Butler Yeats – Aff Link
Rosicrucian Fellowship
The Secrets of the Belline Oracle – Sylvie Steinbach – Aff Link
Crowley Thoth Tarot Deck
Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards – The Morgan Library
Visconti Sforza Tarot Cards Cards – Stuart R. Kaplan – Aff Link
Miniature Rider-Waite® Tarot – Pamela C. Smith – Aff Link
Rider Waite Gold Foil Tarot Deck – Aff Link
The Original Rider Waite: The Pictorial Key To The Tarot: An Illustrated Guide – A.E. Waite – Aff Link
Tarot Revelations – Joseph Campbell, Richard Roberts – Aff Link 
A to z Horoscope Maker and Delineator – Llewellyn George – Aff Link
A Treatise on the Astrolabe – Geoffrey Chaucer – Aff Link
Antithesis – Rhetorical Device
Gimpel the Fool: And Other Stories – Isaac Bashevis Singer – Aff Link
The Miller’s Tale – Geoffrey Chaucer
Morphology of the Folktale – V. Propp – Aff Link
Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index
Taylor Swift’s Tarot Card Revelation Proves None of Travis Kelce Romance Was Accidental
Inclusio
The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix

Follow Us:
Patreon
⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠
⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠
⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠
Threads
⁠Angela’s Instagram⁠
Uncle Jerry’s Instagram

We’ve made it to the third and final episode of our beloved Folklore Love Triangle! We hope you’ve enjoyed this little series as much as we have. This episode dives into all the poetry and themes of cardigan, and then Uncle Jerry wraps up all the themes and questions and answers found in these three songs.

Works Cited:
Rashomon Effect
The Rashomon Effect: When Ethnographers Disagree – Karl G. Heider
Disnarration and the Unmentioned in Fact and Fiction – Marina Lambrou – Aff Link
Disnarration and the performance of storytelling in Taylor Swift’s folklore and evermore
The Blind Man and The Elephant
Split Narratives or Fragmented Narratives
Enjambment 
Epistrophe
Anaphora
The Longest Time – Billy Joel 
Love Stinks – The J. Geils Band
The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix

Follow Us:
Patreon
⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠
⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠
⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠
Threads
⁠Angela’s Instagram⁠
Uncle Jerry’s Instagram

We’re back for the second installment of the folklore love triangle! Uncle Jerry really changed his tune on these lyrics, both as a poem and as a song, while Angela notices some “teenage diction” that she’s never picked up on before. Come back next week to wrap this all up with us!

Works Cited:
Rashomon Effect
The Rashomon Effect: When Ethnographers Disagree – Karl G. Heider
Disnarration and the Unmentioned in Fact and Fiction – Marina Lambrou – Aff Link
Disnarration and the performance of storytelling in Taylor Swift’s folklore and evermore
The Blind Man and The Elephant
Split Narratives or Fragmented Narratives
Winesburg, Ohio – Sherwood Anderson – Aff Link
Spoon River Anthology – Edgar Lee Masters – Aff Link
The Flowers of Evil – Charles Baudelaire – Aff Link
Flipped (2010)
Apophasis
Hyperbole
Book of Genesis

The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix

Follow Us:
Patreon
⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠
⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠
⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠
⁠Angela’s Instagram⁠
Uncle Jerry’s Instagram

Friends, it's finally here! Over the next three episodes, we are diving into our beloved Folklore Love Triangle. First up is August. Uncle Jerry begins by talking about the narrative of these three songs and how they are woven together across the album, and then we dissect the poem of August. 
These three episodes will all build on each other, and we’ll round out the discussion in week 3. 

Works Cited:
Rashomon Effect
The Rashomon Effect: When Ethnographers Disagree – Karl G. Heider
The Blind Man and The Elephant
Disnarration and the performance of storytelling in Taylor Swift’s folklore and evermore
Split Narratives or Fragmented Narratives
Dramatic Irony
Kenning
The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix

Follow Us:
Patreon
⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠
⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠
⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠
⁠Angela’s Instagram⁠
Uncle Jerry’s Instagram