Abstract
The Romantic “obsession with the self and with self-consciousness” (Simpson 2007) is clearly to be found in modern pop and rock music, especially in highly emotional music genres. Among those, “emo” is notorious for its direct expression of the Weltschmerz felt by its singers. This chapter on the tradition of Romantic poetry in “Emo(tional) Rock Music” traces the influence of British Romantic poetry on its modern descendants who carried the Romantic poet’s self-centeredness to extremes and created worlds of pure subjectivity, partially through their use of the pathetic fallacy. Such projections of the self and the projection of the “mind-forg’d” realities of the songwriter into emo music can be found in the lyrics of bands like AFI, La Dispute, and Finch.
“Emo’s Just Another Name for Romanticism”
—The Danburrys
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Notes
- 1.
Robert Sayre and Michael Löwy, “Figures of Romantic Anti-Capitalism,” New German Critique 32 (1984): 43.
- 2.
Andy Greenwald, Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2003), 1.
- 3.
Ibid., 2.
- 4.
Sayre and Löwy, “Figures of Romantic Anti-Capitalism,” 54.
- 5.
Ibid., 60ff.
- 6.
See Ina Schabert, Englische Literaturgeschichte: Eine neue Darstellung aus der Sicht der Geschlechterforschung (Stuttgart: Kröner, 1997), 381ff.
- 7.
Emily Ryalls, “Emo Angst, Masochism, and Masculinity in Crisis,” Text and Performance Quarterly 33, no. 2 (2013): 87.
- 8.
Aaron P. Anastasi, “Adolescent Boys’ Use of Emo Music as Their Healing Lament,” Journal of Religion and Health 44, no. 3 (2005): 313.
- 9.
“Originally, emo was short for ‘emocore’, a strain of hardcore punk that was notable for its obsession with feelings (as opposed to politics, anger, and smashing stuff up).” Greenwald, Nothing Feels Good, 2.
- 10.
See Anastasi, “Adolescent Boys’ Use of Emo Music as Their Healing Lament,” 303–19.
- 11.
“Romanticism,” last modified Oct. 31, 2014, http://www.britannica.com/art/Romanticism. Accessed Jan. 5, 2017.
- 12.
See Morse Peckham, The Birth of Romanticism: 1790–1815 (Greenwood, FL: Penkevill, 1986), 67ff.
- 13.
Silverchair . Neon Ballroom. Sony/Murmur MATTCD084, 1999, compact disc.
- 14.
Peckham, The Birth of Romanticism: 1790–1815, 67.
- 15.
Dark555, March 13, 2013 (12:22 a.m.), blog entry on emopuddle.com, “What songs made you wanna cry?”, http://www.emopuddle.com/topic/10532-what-songs-made-you-wanna-cry/. Accessed Jan. 5, 2017.
- 16.
See Ryalls, “Emo Angst, Masochism, and Masculinity in Crisis,” 83–97.
- 17.
Ibid., 85.
- 18.
Sean Homer , Jacques Lacan (London: Routledge, 2005), 78.
- 19.
John Ruskin, Modern Painters: Volume III (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co. 1904), 205.
- 20.
Ibid., 205.
- 21.
Ibid., 223.
- 22.
Michael Sprinker, “Ruskin on the Imagination,” Studies in Romanticism 18, no. 1 (1979): 134.
- 23.
Stefano Evangelista, “‘Outward Nature and the Moods of Men’: Romantic Mythology in Pater’s Essays on Dionysus and Demeter,” in Walter Pater: Transparencies of Desire, ed. Laurel Brake et al . (Greensboro: ELT Press 2002), 114.
- 24.
Sayre and Löwy , “Figures of Romantic Anti-Capitalism,” 55.
- 25.
Tooth & Nail Records is a Christian rock record label that promoted some Christian emo bands, but they are an exception to the rule.
- 26.
Robert Snell, Uncertainties, Mysteries, Doubts: Romanticism and the Analytic Attitude (London et al.: Routledge 2013), 25.
- 27.
See M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press 1953), 275ff.
- 28.
See Peter M. Sinclair “Heterocosm: The Postmodern Understanding of the Author/God Analogy,” last modified October 21, 2013, http://petermsinclair.com/2013/10/21/heterocosm-the-postmodern-understanding-of-the-author-god-analogy/. Accessed Jan. 5, 2017.
- 29.
Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp, 272.
- 30.
Ibid., 272.
- 31.
See Ryalls, “Emo Angst, Masochism, and Masculinity in Crisis,” 93ff. “Emorexia” refers to the skinny physique of both emo women and men.
- 32.
“Undisguised self-revelations” or explicitly autobiographical poetry does, of course, also occur in Romantic poetry (e.g. The Prelude). Yet it seems as if emo lyrics could justifiably be labeled as such in general, for it is the defining characteristic, which is explicitly expressed by emo culture’s “code of conduct.”
- 33.
See Sayre and Löwy , 60ff.
- 34.
Ibid., 63.
- 35.
William Blake, “London,” in The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. David V. Erdman (New York: Anchor Books, 1988), 26–7.
- 36.
Ibid.
- 37.
Linda Seida, “Finch Biography,” http://www.allmusic.com/artist/finch-mn0000185018/biography. Accessed October 7, 2015.
- 38.
See “Finch: What It Is to Burn Meaning,” https://www.lyricinterpretations.com/finch/what-it-is-to-burn. Accessed October 7, 2015.
- 39.
Finch. What It Is to Burn. Universal Music 422 860 991-2/DTR 28, 2003, compact disc.
- 40.
Ibid.
- 41.
Ibid.
- 42.
Ibid., “But I am safe in here, from the world outside.”
- 43.
Ibid.
- 44.
William Wordsworth, “Preface to the Second Edition…”, in Wordsworth: Poetical Works, ed. Thomas Hutchinson, rev. Ernest de Selincourt (New York: Oxford UP, 1971), 740.
- 45.
Steve Huey , “AFI Biography,” http://www.allmusic.com/artist/afi-mn0000589630/biography. Accessed October 7, 2015.
- 46.
Ibid.
- 47.
Ibid.
- 48.
Ibid.
- 49.
Fred Thomas, “La Dispute Biography,” http://www.allmusic.com/artist/la-dispute-mn0001391526/biography. Accessed October 7, 2015.
- 50.
La Dispute, Rooms of the House, Better Living/Staple Records BL1/WH34, 2014, compact disc.
- 51.
Ibid.
- 52.
Ibid.
- 53.
Abrams, 296.
- 54.
La Dispute, Rooms of the House, 2014.
- 55.
La Dispute address random misery in many of their songs (e.g. “King Park” or “The Child We Lost”).
- 56.
La Dispute, Rooms of the House, 2014.
- 57.
Fight Club, dir. David Fincher, Frankfurt/Main, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Inc., 2003, DVD.
- 58.
Jean Hall, “The Evolution of the Surface Self: Byron’s Poetic Career,” Keats-Shelley Journal 36 (1987): 140.
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Träger, E. (2018). Emocosms: Mind-Forg’d Realities in Emo(tional) Rock Music. In: Rovira, J. (eds) Rock and Romanticism. Palgrave Studies in Music and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72688-5_10
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