The Swiftie and The Scholar

Buckle up, y’all. We’ve got a beefy one for you today! We’re tackling Babylon from Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore. I think we all knew this one would give Uncle Jerry plenty to think about and chew on and teach from, and he did not disappoint. Maybe grab your breakfast or dinner and a nice beverage and get comfy, because this is our longest episode yet.

*Links with an asterisk are affiliate links, which allow us to make a small commission on your purchase at no cost to you. Thanks so much for your support!

Works Cited:
The Autobiography of Red – Anne Carson
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
Angela’s Reaction Video – The Encore 
Professing Literature: An Institutional History – Gerald Graff
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
Ancient Babylon
What Does "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin" Mean?
Ozymandias – Percy Bysshe Shelley
Babylon (2022)
Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory
Wild Things (1998)
Where The Wild Things Are – Maurice Sendak 
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
Wild Thing – The Troggs
The Libertine (2004)
Onomatopoeia
Metonymy
Logos, Pathos, Ethos
Dramatic Irony
Miniver Cheevy – Edwin Arlington Robinson
The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix

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In this episode, we are taking it back to the very beginning with Tim McGraw from Taylor Swift’s debut album. Uncle Jerry finds plenty to discuss and is charmed by hearing both young Taylor’s early poetics and her country twang. 

Works Cited:
Tug McGraw
In medias res
Free indirect discourse
Alliteration
Metonymy
Signposting
Rasselas – Samuel Johnson
Palimpsest
Enjambment
Frame story or frame structure
Leitmotif
The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix

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Today I have something a bit different for you! I sat down with Sarah Anderson, author of Fallow, to discuss getting published, her love of short stories, how she wrote the main character of the book, and so much more. All of the books we discussed are linked below.

Fallow – Sarah Anderson:
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
*Libro.fm
Take Me to Kirkland – Sarah Anderson: https://joylandpublishing.com/fiction/take-me-to-kirkland/
The Best American Short Stories 2025 –  Celeste Ng, Nicole A. Lamy:
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
*Libro.fm
Marlena – Julie Buntin:
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
*Libro.fm
Famous Men – Julie Buntin:
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
*Libro.fm
Health Trackers Are Everywhere. Do Babies Need Them Too? – The Daily:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5QNrdUSF28Vsxla5a0exzK?si=TPgMlCapQwy4AJuqP1ptoQ 
Temporary – Hilary Leichter:
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
*Libro.fm
The Quick and the Dead – Joy Williams:
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
*Libro.fm
The Visiting Privilege – Joy Williams:
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
*Libro.fm
All Fours – Miranda July
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
*Libro.fm
The First Bad Man – Miranda July
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
*Libro.fm
Margo’s Got Money Troubles – Rufi Thorpe
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
*Libro.fm
East of Eden – John Steinbeck
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
*Libro.fm
The Maltese Version – Katy Simpson Smith
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
*Libro.fm

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We did it! One album down, lots to go. Uncle Jerry takes us through alllllll the unifying themes, devices, questions, and more (13 to be exact) of the folklore album as a whole. Thanks for coming on this journey with us!

*Links with an asterisk are affiliate links, which allow us to make a small commission on your purchase at no cost to you. Thanks so much for your support!

Works Cited:
Sonnets from the Portuguese 20: Beloved, my Beloved, when I think – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
*Aurora Leigh: A Norton Critical Edition – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
*Morphology of the Folktale – V. Propp 
*The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales – Bruno Bettelheim
*Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion – Jack Zipes
*Fairy Tale as Myth/Myth as Fairy Tale – Jack Zipes
*The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales – Jack Zipes 
*The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: A Norton Critical Edition – Jack Zipes 
*Literary Theory: An Introduction – Terry Eagleton
*Witches, Ogres, and the Devil's Daughter: Encounters with Evil in Fairy Tales – Mario Jacoby, Verena Kast, Ingrid Riedel
*Retelling / Rereading: The Fate of Storytelling in Modern Times – Karl Kroeber 
*Linguistic Criticism – Roger Fowler
*From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers – Marina Warner
*No Go, the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling, and Making Mock – Marina Warner
[anyone lived in a pretty how town] – e.e. cummings
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird – Wallace Stevens
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Lore & Lyrics
Ulysses – James Joyce
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
*Slaughter-House Five – Kurt Vonnegut
*The Catcher in the Rye – J. D. Salinger
*Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Hilary Duff is trying to listen to the healthy part of her brain – Los Angeles Times
The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix

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Well, guys, we’ve really stressed Uncle Jerry out with this one. He went so deep on the folklore album as a whole that this episode focuses mostly on the prologue and how it sets up this new style of storytelling, different from all her previous albums. Hope you enjoy, and we’ll see you back here next week for Part 2!

*Links with an asterisk are affiliate links, which allow us to make a small commission on your purchase at no cost to you. Thanks so much for your support!

Works Cited:
*Starship Troopers – Robert A. Heinlein 
Folklore (Taylor Swift album)
*Shakespeare's Sonnets & Poems – William Shakespeare
*Sonnets from the Portuguese – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
*Astrophil and Stella – Sir Philip Sidney 
Semiotics
The Odyssey – Homer
Beowulf
Dryads
Hulder
Folklore prologue
Daddy – Sylvia Plath
Anecdote of the Jar – Wallace Stevens
The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix

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