Routledge Handbook of Progressive Rock, Metal, and the Literary - Imaginatio

This Handbook illustrates the many ways that progressive rock and metal music forge striking engagements with literary texts and themes. The authors and their objects of analytic inquiry offer global and diverse perspectives on these genres and their literary connections.

List of contents

List of Contributors
List of Figures
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Reflections on The Literary Imagination in Progressive Rock and Metal
Chris Anderton and Lori Burns
Part I. Theoretical Frameworks
1. More Erudite than Your Average Rock Band: Progressive Rock and Literature
Andy Bennett
2. Cross-pollinations: Progressive Rock and Science Fiction
Chris Anderton

3. So Hard to Find in My Cosmic Mind: Hippie Spirituality and Jon Anderson’s Lyrics
John Covach

4. “Everything in the lower world has its root in higher worlds”: Rock and Religion in Jon Anderson’s Chagall Songs
Jonathan C. Friedman

5. Poets and Prophets: The Lyricists of Early Progressive Rock from Self-Creation to Parody
Leonardo Masi

6. The Origin of Progressive Metal Lyrics in Black Sabbath’s Music
Nolan Stolz

7. The Dystopian Impulse in Prog: Cross-cutting Thread/ts in Dystopian Concept Albums
Marcel Bouvrie
Part II. Literary Adaptations
8. Time Travel Through Tolkien
Sarah Hill and Jon Gower

9. Into the Storm – Blind Guardian’s Nightfall in Middle Earth and the Tolkien Reception in German Metal music
Martin Ringsmut

10. Storytelling Strategies in Camel’s Music Inspired by The Snow Goose
Ryan Blakeley

11. Musical Evocations of the Uncanny in David Bedford’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Kevin Holm-Hudson

12. Royal Hunt’s Adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and the Interplay Between Narrativity and Western Art Music
Aleksandar Golovin

13. Neo-progressive Rock and Children’s Literature: Stories of Innocence and Experience in Marillion’s Misplaced Childhood and Pendragon’s The Masquerade Overture
Marion Brachet

14. Kamelot’s Adaptation of Goethe’s Faust: Tragic Subjectivities in Power Metal
Lori Burns
Part III. Mythologies and Folklores
15. Singing Minstrels, Recorders, and The Carnivalesque: Gentle Giant’s Medievalist Imagination
Richard Worth

16. “We are The Varangian Guard”: Musical Rhetoric and Literary Reference in Turisas’s Varangian Way Albums
Milan K. Schaller

17. “Enuma Elish is Re-written”: A Quantitative Survey of Mesopotamian Mythology’s Reception in Metal Lyrics
János Fejes

18. Keeper of the Seven Keys: Fantastical Themes of Ironic Ambivalence at the Birth of Power Metal
Grigorios Mathioudakis

19. “Legend Never Dies”: Mythology and Canon of Literature in Symphony X’s Underworld
Andrzej Mądro

20. Recovery, Escape, and Consolation: Uriah Heep’s The Magician’s Birthday as Fairy-Story
Joshua B. Tuttle

21. “A Maze with Very Minimal Guiding Light, Thematically Slithering Between Worlds”: Black Metal, Progressive Rock, and Ambivalent Constellations of Imagination in Remmirath’s Shambhala Vril Saucers
Owen Coggins
Part IV. Storyworlds
22. Narrative Worldmaking as Social Commentary in Pink Floyd’s Animals
Alexander C. Harden

23. Invisible Nonsense: Zero the Hero’s Journey in Gong’s Radio Gnome Invisible Trilogy
Jay Keister

24. The Edge of this Airfield: Ballardian Liminal Spaces in the Music of Trevor Horn
Jacob Holm-Lupo

25. Finding Progressive Rock in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure
Ivan Tan

26. Dream Theater’s The Astonishing: The Unification of the Literary and the Musical
Ciro Scotto

27. Storytelling, Narrative, and Coherence in Avatar’s Feathers and Flesh – In His Own Words (2017)
Elise Girard-Despraulex

28. The Hauntology of Story, Gameplay, Images, and Music: Hajo Müller, Steven Wilson, Jess Cope, and Ovosonico’s Last Day of June
Patrick Armstrong and Lori Burns
Part V. Subjectivities and Identities
29. The New Jerusalem: Genesis and Englishness
David Pattie

30. Us & Them: Dystopias, Resistance, and Literary Influences in Roger Waters’ Work (1968–2019)
Philippe Gonin

31. Las Alturas de Machu Picchu: Los Jaivas, Progressive Rock, and the Unmooring of Latin American Identity
Israel Holas Allimant and Sergio Holas Véliz

32. “La Libre Creación”: Exploring Narrativity in the Progressive Rock of Northwest Spain during the Spanish Transition to Democracy
Eduardo Garcia Salueña

33. Resonating Authenticities: Chinese Progressive Rock Lyrics as Socio-Political Critique and Cultural Expression
Mengyao Jiang

34. Ambiguity, Identity, and Memory in Japanese Progressive Rock
Akitsugu Kawamoto

35. The Tool Album as Gesamtkunstwerk
Nicole Biamonte and Jerry Cain
Index

About the author

Chris Anderton is Associate Professor in Cultural Economy at Southampton Solent University, Southampton, U.K. He has written/edited five books and published numerous chapters and journal articles on music business, music festivals, music fandom, music genre, media narratives of music, and progressive rock. He guest-edited a special edition of Rock Music Studies that focused on progressive rock (2019), and is currently co-editing The Intellect Handbook of Global Music Industries. He is also the editor of The Anthem Impact in Music Business, Technology and Culture book series.
Lori Burns is Professor of Music at the University of Ottawa, Canada. Her interdisciplinary research, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, merges musical analysis and cultural theory to explore representations of gender and sexuality in the lyrical, musical, and visual texts of popular music. She has published articles in edited collections and leading journals. Her 2002 monograph, Disruptive Divas: Feminism, Identity, and Popular Music, won the Pauline Alderman Award in 2005. She is co-editor of The Pop Palimpsest with Serge Lacasse (2018), The Bloomsbury Handbook to Popular Music Video Analysis with Stan Hawkins (2019), and Analyzing Recorded Music with William Moylan and Mike Alleyne (2022). Two additional edited collections are forthcoming: The Routledge Handbook of Metal Music Composition with Ciro Scotto and The Routledge Handbook to the Popular Music Cover Song with Mike Alleyne.

Summary

This Handbook illustrates the many ways that progressive rock and metal music forge striking engagements with literary texts and themes. The authors and their objects of analytic inquiry offer global and diverse perspectives on these genres and their literary connections.

Product details

• Authors: Chris Burns Anderton
• Assisted by: Chris Anderton (Editor), Anderton Chris (Editor), Lori Burns (Editor)
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 26.02.2025
• EAN: 9781032340739
• ISBN: 978-1-0-3234073-9
• No. of pages: 450
• Series: Routledge Music Handbooks
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > General, dictionaries; Rock, Popular Culture, Rock & Pop music, MUSIC / General, MUSIC / History & Criticism, MUSIC / Genres & Styles / Rock, MUSIC / Genres & Styles / Pop Vocal, Music recording & reproduction, Pop Music, Popular Music, Metal, Heavy Metal, Music recording and reproduction