‘Tortured Poets Department’ Syllabus: Books, Readings, and Resources

Taylor Swift will release her 11th studio album ‘Tortured Poets Department’ on April 19, 2024.

Course Description

Course examines Taylor Swift's discography and its references to classic poetry, literature, and fiction, analyzing their historical and contemporary contexts.

Course Schedule

(Note: Schedule is subject to change based on the needs of the class.)

Week 1: Taylor Swift (Debut)

• Released: October 24, 2006

Notable Songs

• “The Outside”: Taylor Swift references Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” in her lyrics when she sings “I tried to take the road less traveled by / But nothing seems to work the first few times, am I right?”

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood / And sorry I could not travel both

—

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by

And that has made all the difference.”

– Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

Required Texts

• “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost

Week 2: Fearless

• Released: November 11, 2008

Notable Songs

• “Love Story”: Taylor Swift alludes to two well-known literary works in her lyrics: “Cause you were Romeo, I was a scarlet letter / And my daddy said, 'Stay away from Juliet.’”: Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Both of these lyrics express the emotions linked with forbidden love.

Required Texts

• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Week 3: Speak Now

• Released: October 25, 2010

Notable Songs

• TBD

Required Texts

• TBD

Week 4: Red

• Released: October 22, 2012

Notable Songs

• Red Prologue: Taylor Swift references Pablo Neruda’s “Tonight I Can Write” twice in Red. First during the forward of the original Red album in 2012, and second at the beginning of the Taylor Swift - All Too Well: The Short Film.

““Love is so short, forgetting is so long” — Pablo Neruda

• “All Too Well” (10-Minute Version): Taylor Swift uses a familiar turn of phrase in these lyrics, “They say all's well that ends well / But I'm in a new hell / Every time you double-cross my mind.” All's Well That Ends Well is a Shakespeare “problem play.” This story follows Helen, who marries Bertram despite his higher social standing and lack of interest in her, but she finds little happiness as he shuns and betrays her. Helen then hatches an elaborate plan to win his acceptance and heart.

Required Texts

• All’s Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare

• “Tonight I Can Write” by Pablo Neruda

• Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda

• Was Shakespeare A Feminist? Feminist Criticism, Gender Studies

Week 5: 1989

• Released on Sylvia Plath’s birthday: October 27, 2014

Notable Songs

• “Wonderland”: Taylor Swift draws parallels to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in this song. Starting with the lyrics “We took a wrong turn / And we fell down a rabbit hole,” which mirrors Alice's fall down the rabbit hole. Swift then sings, “We found Wonderland / You and I got lost in it.” She also references her lover's smile as akin to the Cheshire Cat with her lyrics, “Didn't you calm my fears with a Cheshire cat smile?” Taylor positions herself as the heroine, Alice, who is lost in a parallel world. These lyrics illustrate how love can transform from a beautiful dream to a nightmare, leaving us unable to return to who we once were.

• “New Romantics”: Taylor Swift references the New Romantics artistic movement of the 1980s in the lyrics “Baby, we're the new romantics / The best people in life are free.” She also samples synth rhythms made famous by artists of the New Romantic movement throughout 1989, produced with Jack Antonoff.

• “New Romantics”: Swift again references The Scarlet Letter in her lyrics: “We show off our different scarlet letters / Trust me mine is better.” In these lyrics, she takes a symbol of shame and turning it into a badge of honor to be proudly worn.

• Taylor Swift often references the 1989 era in her later discography, reflecting on the love she lost in New York City. In “This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things,” she recalls the line “Bass beat rattling the chandelier / Feelin' so Gatsby for that whole year,” which is a nod to the 1989 era. In Lover, she alludes to the 1989 era again in “Death By A Thousand Cuts” when she sings, “Chandelier still flickering here / 'Cause I can't pretend it's okay when it's not.” In both reputation and Lover, Swift appears to be singing about a past love that she still thinks about.

Required Texts

• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

• Love and Suicide: Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes by Janette Ayachi

• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Lord Byron and the New Romantics by Emily Bernhard Jackson

• Inventing the Eighties: How the New Romantics Transformed Punk Rebellion Into Era-Defining Pop by Piotr Orlov

Week 6: reputation

• Released: November 10, 2017

Notable Songs

• “Don’t Blame Me”: Taylor Swift seems to reference The Great Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan in her lyrics “I once was poison ivy, but now I'm your daisy.”

• “Ready For It?”: Taylor Swift references William Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew in her lyrics “He can be my jailer, Burton to this Taylor / Every lover known in comparison is a failure / I forget their names now, I'm so very tame now.” Burton and Taylor were an old Hollywood couple who had an infamous and tragic love affair. The two were known for their collaborations in film, with their most famous movies being Taming of the Shrew and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

“And place your hands below your husband's foot;
In token of which duty, if he please,
My hand is ready, may it do him ease.”

– Taming of the Shrew, Act V, Scene 2

• “This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things”: Taylor Swift references The Great Gatsby in her lyric “Bass beat rattling the chandelier / Feelin' so Gatsby for that whole year” in a meta-reference to her previous era, 1989

• “Getaway Car”: Taylor Swift references the opening lines of one of Dickens's most famous novels in her lyrics, “It was the best of times / The worst of crimes,” in reference to A Tale of Two Cities. Set during the French Revolution, London and Paris are the two cities referenced in the novel.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only." – Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

• “So It Goes”: Taylor Swift references Kurt Vonnegut's 1969 novel, Slaughterhouse-Five. The phrase "So It Goes" is used by both Vonnegut and Swift to highlight the delicate nature of human life. It’s spoken during moments when themes of death or dying arise. Slaughterhouse-Five contains a broken timeline and an unreliable narrator, similar to Swift’s artistic musings and discography.

• “Getaway Car”: In the behind the scenes footage for the making of “Getaway Car” – producer Jack Antonoff is seen wearing a yellow t-shirt that says “Everything you always wanted to know about publicity* (but were too afraid to ask).” The design and text on this shirt is a direct reference to David Reuben's 1969 book Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask).

• Jack Antonoff is doing a few things with this reference:

  • Jack is linking sex and romance with publicity and PR relationships

  • Jack is telling us that celebrities will “take the money” if the price is right

  • Jack may also be layering a commentary on LGBTQ+ celebrities in reference to the social backlash Reuben's novel caused within the community

• Taylor Swift's original poem “Why She Disappeared” from the reputation era explains the reason behind her disappearance from the public eye in 2017. The themes found in her poem, as well as the motifs in her album reputation, are similar to those present in Sylvia Plath's poem “Monologue At 3 AM.”

• “Call It What You Want”: Taylor Swift parallels “Monologue At 3 AM” when she sings about a great kingdom she once ruled crumbling around her. “My castle crumbled overnight. I brought a knife to a gunfight. They took the crown, but it's alright.” In these works, Swift and Plath both describe the crushing weight of falling from the precipice of fame.

“Better that every fiber crack
and fury make head,
blood drenching vivid
couch, carpet, floor
and the snake-figured almanac
vouching you are
a million green counties from here,

than to sit mute, twitching so
under prickling stars,
with stare, with curse
blackening the time
goodbyes were said, trains let go,
and I, great magnanimous fool, thus wrenched from
my one kingdom.”

– Sylvia Plath, “Monologue At 3 AM.”

• “Call It What You Want”: Taylor Swift references Carrie by Stephen King in her song “Call It What You Want” when she sings, “They took the crown but it’s alright.” This line alone doesn't complete the connection, but when paired with the lyric “I looked around in a blood-soaked gown. And I saw something they can't take away” from her song “You’re On Your Own Kid,” referencing Swift’s fall from fame between 1989 and reputation, the lyrics allude to the plot of Carrie, where the main character is tricked into going on stage to accept her award as prom queen, only to have blood dumped on her in front of her classmates.

Required Texts

• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

• Carrie by Stephen King

• Vanity Fair: Crazy Love: Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s Epic Romance

• Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)

• Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Dr. David Reuben*

• Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century by Sam Kashner, Nancy Schoenberger

• “Monologue At 3 AM” by Sylvia Plath

• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

• Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare

• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee

• “Why She Disappeared” by Taylor Allison Swift

Week 7: Lover

• Released: August 23, 2019

Notable Songs

• The Lover House: Taylor Swift’s Lover House could be a reference to Emily Dickinson’s “I Know Some Lonely Houses Off the Road.” In this poem, two crooks happen upon a lonely house on a hill filled with treasures. They hatch a plan to rob it before the old couple who lives awakens. (See: Cowboy Like Me).

• The concept of an empty house representing a lost love can also be found in Pablo Neruda’s “Till Then My Windows Ache.” Swift references Neruda in Red era.

“So I wait for you like a lonely house
till you will see me again and live in me.
Till then my windows ache.”

– Pablo Neruda, Till Then My Windows Ache

• “Lover”: Taylor Swift calls back to All’s Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare in her lyrics, “Alls well that ends well to end up with you.”

Required Texts

• All’s Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare

• “I Know Some Lonely Houses Off the Road” by Emily Dickinson

• “Till Then My Windows Ache” by Pablo Neruda

Week 8: Folklore

• Released: July 24, 2020

Notable Songs

• “seven”: Taylor Swift references A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, a story about "the things and people that had been left out before.” In this story, India represents, both literally and metaphorically, a faraway land wrapped in mystery and folklore, an escape from both girls' daily hardship and reality.

• “the 1”: Taylor Swift calls back to The Great Gatsby and the 1989 era in the lyrics of this song when she sings, “But we were something, don't you think so? Roaring twenties, tossing pennies in the pool.” Not only does this song reference the Roaring 20’s – the lyrics about tossing pennies in the pool call back to the lyrics of “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” from reputation, a song that meta-references 1989 when she sings, “Feeling so Gatsby for that whole year.”

• “the lakes”: Taylor Swift references the English Lake Poets, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, and Dorothy Wordsworth, who lived in the English Lake District at the turn of the 19th century. “Take me to the lakes where all the poets went to die / I don't belong, and my beloved, neither do you.”

• “invisible string”: In her lyrics, “And isn't it just so pretty to think / All along there was some / Invisible string / Tying you to me.” Swift may be referencing a conversation between Jane and Rochester in the book Jane Eyre, in which Rochester says “I have a strange feeling with regard to you: as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly knotted to a similar string in you” as he begs Jane to forgive him and take him back. (She does).

• The lyrics “And isn't it just so pretty to think / All along there was some / Invisible string / Tying you to me,” can also be linked to the final words in the novel The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemmingway. The reader is left to question whether things can really be so simple or if life’s complications will always get in the way.

"Oh Jake," Brett said, "We could have had such a damned good time together." Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly, pressing Brett against me. "Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?"

• “mad woman”: Taylor Swift references the “The Mad Woman in the Attic,” a trope popularized in Jane Eyre. The mad woman in Jane Eyre is Bertha Mason, Mr. Rochester’s first wife, locked away in the attic to hide her madness. “Every time you call me crazy, I get more crazy / What about that?” Later in the novel, Bertha (assumed be driven by her madness) sets fire to Rochester’s estate, Thornfield, before jumping from the roof of the burning house to her death. It’s only after her death do Jane and Mr. Rochester finally get married.

• “cardigan”: Taylor Swift references Peter Pan and highlights the fleeting nature of love in her lyrics, “I knew you / Tried to change the ending / Peter losing Wendy.” This line demonstrates Swift's wish to undo her past selfishness that caused the end of a previous relationship. Peter lost Wendy because he refused to mature, while Wendy desired a chance to live a full life.

• “illicit affairs”: Taylor Swift references Robert Frost in this song's lyrics, “Take the road less traveled by / Tell yourself you can always stop,” a nod to The Road Not Taken. Frost wrote: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I– / I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” In these lyrics, Swift is trying to convince herself that she’s made the right choice and that she can always turn back and start over if she ever decides it was the wrong decision.

• “mirrorball”: Taylor Swift references Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus” in the lyrics of her song when she sings, “You are not like the regulars / The masquerade revelers / Drunk as they watch my shattered edges glisten.” These lyrics parallel Plath’s struggle with fame and how art is consumed. “The peanut-crunching crowd / Shoves in to see / Them unwrap me hand and foot / The big strip tease.”

• “The Last Great American Dynasty”: Taylor Swift references Rebekah Harkness, a real-life American composer, socialite, and patroness of the arts and ballet. In her lyrics, “Filled the pool with champagne and swam with the big names,” – Swift may be referring back to 1989 era and themes found in The Great Gatsby.

Required Texts

• A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

• “Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath

• “Mad Girl's Love Song” by Sylvia Plath

• Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

• “Shutting Her Up:” An Exploration of the Madwoman and the Madhouse in Victorian Literature

• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

• The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination

• The Outrageous Life of Rebekah Harkness, Taylor Swift’s High-Society Muse

• “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost

• The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

• Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

Week 9: evermore

• Released on Emily Dickinson’s birthday: December 10, 2020

Notable Songs

• “happiness”: Taylor Swift references The Great Gatsby in her lyric, “I hope she'll be a beautiful fool / Who takes my spot next to you” - calling back to Daisy’s character saying of her hopes for her daughter’s future, “I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool. In her lyrics, she also calls back to Gatsby’s green light motif, “All you want from me now is the green light of forgiveness.” The green light symbolizes hope and undying love.

• “long story short”: Taylor Swift references Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, as well as her previous musical era 1989, when she sings “Cause I fell from the pedestal / Right down the rabbit hole / Long story short, it was a bad time.”

• “ivy”: This song's lyrics may be in reference Dickinson’s friendship and possible romance with Sue Gilbert. In an interview about the album, Swift herself said the cover art was inspired by a “girl sleepwalking through the forest in a nightgown in 1830,” the same year Dickinson was born.

• “Tolerate It”: Taylor Swift said in an interview that this song was inspired by Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. This story follows a woman’s obsession with her husband’s first wife and how her memory and presence haunts their new home.

• “evermore”: Taylor Swift references Jane Eyre (again) in her lyrics, “Writing letters addressed to the fire.” This calls back to the section of the novel when Jane is writing letters to Rochester’s estate, unaware that the house has burned to the ground by his first wife and the letters are not being received by her lover.

• “closure”: The fire and the letters in Jane Eyre could be referenced in the lyrics of this song as well when she sings, “Yes, I got your letter / Yes, I'm doing better.”

• “tis the damn season”: Taylor Swift references Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken a third time in her lyrics when she sings “And the road not taken looks real good now / And it always leads to you in my hometown.”

• “willow”: Taylor Swift references Shakespeare's Hamlet and the doomed relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia within the play. Ophelia is another “mad woman” character who dies after Hamlet rejects her, sending her wandering into the forest, where she climbs into a willow tree and the branch snaps. This causes her to fall into the river and tragically drown.

“Second, third, and hundredth chances. Balancin' on breaking branches.”

— Taylor Swift, exile

Required Texts

• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

• Big Reputations: Celebrity and Temporal Duration in/of Dickinson Lyrics by Elizabeth Dinneny

• Hamlet by William Shakespeare

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

• Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

• Taylor Swift’s new album ends on a hopeful note – with echoes of Emily Dickinson

• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

• The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

• Time, Curious Time: How Taylor Swift Draws on Writing From the Past

Week 10: Midnights

• Released: October 21, 2022

Notable Songs

• “Bejeweled”: Taylor Swift portrays herself as a Cinderella-like character in the music video for “Bejeweled,” named "House Wench Taylor.” This can be linked to the Hans-Christian Andersen story, as well as Sylvia Plath’s poem “Cinderella.”

• “Bejeweled”: Taylor Swift references The Little Mermaid in her music video for "Bejeweled," alluding to the iconic shell necklace that Ursula uses to steal Ariel's voice with a golden locket in the shape of a seashell.

• “Dear Reader”: Taylor Swift may be referencing the ending to Brontës novel Jane Eyre, “Reader, I married him,” in which we learn that Jane has forgiven Rochester of his many moral failings and become his wife – a happy ending for Jane?

• “Dear Reader”: Taylor Swift may be referencing Emily Dickinson’s “Tell All the Truth but Tell It Slant” and “I’m Nobody! Who Are You?” in the lyrics of this song when she sings, “So I wander through these nights / I prefer hiding in plain sight” and “You should find another guiding light / Guiding light / But I shine so bright.” In these sequences of lyrics, Taylor Swift laments the visibility of her fame and begs the reader not to take her advice, as she’s not living the life she claims to be. However, she also acknowledges how easy it is to blindly follow her because of how brightly she shines against the darkness.

“I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody too?
Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!
They'd banish us; you know!

How dreary to be somebody!
How public like a frog
To tell one's name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!”

Emily Dickinson, I’m Nobody! Who Are You?

• “Lavender Haze”: Taylor Swift sings about her complicated feelings regarding marriage and being a wife in the lyrics of “Lavender Haze.” Emily Dickinson writes about her feelings about being a Wife™ in her poem “I’m “Wife”—I’ve Finished That.”

• “Hits Different”: Taylor Swift alludes to famous science-fantasy novel A Wrinkle in Time with her lyrics, “A wrinkle in time like the crease by your eyes, this is why you don’t kill off the main guy.”

• “Anti-Hero”: In the music video for her song “Anti-Hero,” Taylor Swift alludes to famous author Ernest Hemingway in the scene where she’s shown to have left her entire fortune to her three cats to create a cat sanctuary. In the video, the daughter-in-law states that “cats don’t even like the beach,” a nod to the fact that Hemingway’s vacation home in Key West, Florida, is now the site of a museum and cat sanctuary named after him.

• “Maroon”: Taylor Swift references the ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz in her lyrics, “The rubies that I gave up / And I lost you / The one I was dancing with / In New York, no shoes.” This could refer to the scene where Dorthy tries to give away the ruby slippers in order to save her friends.

• “Maroon”: Taylor Swift calls back to Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter in her lyrics, “The lips I used to call home, so scarlet, it was maroon.” These lyrics suggest that the lips of this muse were so forbidden or sinful – that the relationship couldn’t last. It was abandoned or marooned.

“… And when I was shipwrecked (can't think of all the cost)
I thought of you (all the things that will be lost now)”

– Taylor Swift, evermore

• “You’re On Your Own Kid”: Taylor Swift references Stephen King’s 1974 horror novel, Carrie, in the lyrics of this song when she says, “I looked around in a blood-soaked gown. And I saw something they can't take away.” This references the scene when Carrie is named prom queen and accepts her award, only to have a bucket of blood dumped on her to humiliate her. Carrie flies into a psychic rage and locks everyone inside the school gymnasium before burning it to the ground.

  • See also: "They took the crown but it’s alright…” from “Call It What You Want” off reputation. Here, Swift says she was dethroned from her place at the top of the industry, but it doesn’t matter because she has a love that will last.

• “High Infidelity”: Taylor Swift sings about a secret affair that brought her back from the dead in the lyrics of her song, “Do you really want to know where I was April 29th? / Do I really have to tell you how he brought me back to life?” This song can be linked to Sylvia Plath's “April Aubade,” about two lovers who enjoy each other’s company and night and can't be together in the day. An aubade is a morning love song, usually sung when lovers part ways at daybreak.

• “The Great War”: Taylor Swift describes one of the greatest battles of her life in the lyrics of this song, referencing the symbolic nature of the poppy flower as it relates to WWI. Poppies are tokens of remembrance for the dead. When Taylor Swift sings about poppies in “The Great War” — she’s laying to rest something from the past and honoring the memory of what it meant to her. This song can be linked to Sylvia Plath’s series of poems on poppies and the seasons. (See also: In Flanders Fields by John McCrae)

“We can plant a memory garden
Say a solemn prayer, place a poppy in my hair
There's no morning glory, it was war, it wasn't fair
And we will never go back”

Required Texts

• “April Aubade” by Sylvia Plath

• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

• Carrie by Stephen King

• “Cinderella” by Sylvia Plath

• “I’m “Wife”—I’ve Finished That” by Emily Dickinson

• “I’m Nobody! Who Are You?” by Emily Dickinson

• In Flanders Fields by John McCrae

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

• “Poppies In July” by Sylvia Plath

• “Poppies In October” by Sylvia Plath

• “Tell All the Truth but Tell It Slant” by Emily Dickinson

• The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen

• The Little Mermaid (1989)

• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

• The Wizard of Oz (1939)

FINAL EXAM: The Tortured Poets Department

• Release: April 19, 2024

Notable Songs

Side B

• “But Daddy I Love Him”: This song title is a reference to a scene in Nicholas Sparks' novel-turned-movie The Notebook as well as Disney's The Little Mermaid.

• “Florida!!! (Florence + the Machine)”: This song title will likely reference to Ernest Hemingway and his time writing novels at his home in Key West, Florida.

Side C

• “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?”: This is a reference to the title of the play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee.

Side D

• “Clara Bow”: Clara Bow was a famous silent film actress of the 1920’s – possibly linking this song to the 1989 era. Extends the metaphor of Taylor relating to characters and famous figures who have had their voices stolen.

• “Clara Bow”: Clara Bow starred in 1925 fantasy drama film called The Ancient Mariner based off the 1798 poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This likely links “Clara Bow” and “The Albatross”.

Bonus Tracks

• “The Manuscript”: This song will likely link back to “Dear Reader”

• “The Albatross”: This song will likely link to “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and/or “L'Albatros” by Charles Baudelaire and/or “The Mad Gardener’s Song” by Lewis Carroll – the author of Alice in Wonderland

• “The Albatross”: This song will likely link to “Coney Island” and the November 1903 fire at the Albatross Hotel and every structure in the Bowery was destroyed.

• “The Albatross”: This song could also link to a passage from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis. In it, the albatross is seen as a symbol of hope.

• “Black Dog”: In literature, black dogs are a symbol of depression or isolation. There are several books that use this theme; Goethe's Faust, The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle, to name a few.

Required Texts

• “April 18” by Sylvia Plath

• Clara Bow, the “It Girl” of the Jazz Age by Robin Bates

• “L'Albatros” by Charles Baudelaire

• “Poem 419: We Grow Accustomed to the Dark” by Emily Dickinson

• Great Fire Ruins Coney Island, New York (1903) – Short Film

• Coney Island History: The Story of William Reynolds and Dreamland

• Coney Island History: The Story of the Bowery at West Brighton

• Goethe's Faust

• The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

• “The Mad Gardener’s Song” by Lewis Carroll

• The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks

• The Notebook (2004)

• The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen

• The Little Mermaid (1989)

• “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee

Additional Readings

These are a selection of optional readings that may enrich your learning experience.

• Art of Reading Poetry by Harold Bloom

• Emma by Jane Austen

• Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

• Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

• Literary Cousins: Frankenstein and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

• Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth

• Middlemarch by George Eliot

• Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

• “Paradise Lost” by John Milton

• Persuasion by Jane Austen

• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

• Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

• The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald

• The Road Not Taken and Other Poems by Robert Frost

• The Romance of Tristan and Iseult

• This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee