Description

A critical analysis of the poetic representations and legacies of five landmark blues artists

The Blues Muse: Race, Gender, and Musical Celebrity in American Poetry focuses on five key blues musicians and singers—Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Robert Johnson, and Lead Belly—and traces the ways in which these artists and their personas have been invoked and developed throughout American poetry. This study spans nearly one hundred years of literary and musical history, from the New Negro Renaissance to the present.

Emily Ruth Rutter not only examines blues musicians as literary touchstones or poetic devices, but also investigates the relationship between poetic constructions of blues icons and shifting discourses of race and gender. Rutter’s nuanced analysis is clear, compelling, and rich in critical assessments of these writers’ portraits of the musical artists, attending to their strategies and oversights.

The Blues Muse: Race, Gender, and Musical Celebrity in American Poetry

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A critical analysis of the poetic representations and legacies of five landmark blues artistsThe Blues Muse: Race, Gender, and Musical... Read more

    Publisher: The University of Alabama Press
    Publication Date: 30/06/2020
    ISBN13: 9780817359942, 978-0817359942
    ISBN10: 081735994X

    Number of Pages: 228

    Non Fiction , ELT & Literary Studies , Education

    Description

    A critical analysis of the poetic representations and legacies of five landmark blues artists

    The Blues Muse: Race, Gender, and Musical Celebrity in American Poetry focuses on five key blues musicians and singers—Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Robert Johnson, and Lead Belly—and traces the ways in which these artists and their personas have been invoked and developed throughout American poetry. This study spans nearly one hundred years of literary and musical history, from the New Negro Renaissance to the present.

    Emily Ruth Rutter not only examines blues musicians as literary touchstones or poetic devices, but also investigates the relationship between poetic constructions of blues icons and shifting discourses of race and gender. Rutter’s nuanced analysis is clear, compelling, and rich in critical assessments of these writers’ portraits of the musical artists, attending to their strategies and oversights.

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