The Routledge Handbook of Progressive Rock, Metal, and the Literary Imagination

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-34073-9
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 472 Seiten, Format (B × H): 252 mm x 176 mm, Gewicht: 1029 g

Reihe: Routledge Music Handbooks

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: from ancient times to the modern world, from children’s literature to epic poetry, from mythology to science fiction, and from esoteric fantasy to harsh political criticism. The musical treatments of these literary materials span the continents from South and North America through Europe and Asia. The collection presents critical perspectives on the enduring and complex relationships between words and music as these are expressed in progressive rock and metal.

The book is aimed primarily at an academic market, valuable for second- through final-year students on undergraduate courses devoted to both popular music and to literary studies, and to postgraduate programs and researchers in a range of fields, including popular music studies, musicology, creative music performance and composition, songwriting, literary studies, narrative studies, folklore studies, science fiction studies, cultural studies, liberal studies, and sociology, and for media and history courses that have an interest in the intersection of narratives, music, and society.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

Anderton, Chris

Burns, Lori

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikgattungen Rock & Pop, Blues, Soul
• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Geschichte der Musik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

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 Madro 
 

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

Über Autor(innen)

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.