Bloomsbury Academic Lit-Rock: Literary Capital in Popular Music

Just as soon as it had got rolling, rock music had a problem: it wanted to be art. A mere four years separate the Beatles as mere kiddy culture from the artful geniuses of Sergeant Pepper’s, meaning the very same band who represents the mass-consumed, "mindless" music of adolescents simultaneously enjoys status as among the best that Western culture has to offer. The story of rock music, it turns out, is less that of a contagious popular form situated in opposition to high art, but, rather, a story of high and low in dialogue--messy and contentious, to be sure, but also mutually obligated to account for, if not appropriate, one another. The chapters in this book track the uses of literature, specifically, within this relation, helping to showcase collectively its fundamental role in the emergence of the "pop omnivore." About the Author Ryan Hibbett is Assistant Professor of English at Northern Illinois University, USA, whose research examines the high art/pop culture relation in literature and music alike. He is the author of Philip Larkin, Popular Culture, and the English Individual (2019), and his articles have appeared in Cambridge Quarterly, Popular Music and Society, Twentieth-Century Literature, Contemporary Literature, and Journal of Popular Music Studies.