Country Matters

Shakespeare and Music in the American South

Authors

  • Robert Sawyer East Tennessee State University

Abstract

While paradoxical, the connection between country music and Shakespeare can help us to understand the role of a "highbrow" signifier in an allegedly "lowbrow" genre of art. This essay examines cultural citations, biographical mythmaking, and parodic performances and concludes that although Shakespeare is used to validate country music as an art form, Shakespearean references are also used ironically to claim a separate ethos for country and its performers and perhaps to encourage a more democratic participation in artistic culture.

Author Biography

Robert Sawyer, East Tennessee State University

Robert Sawyer is Associate Professor and Assistant Chair for Graduate Studies at East Tennessee State University. He is the author of Victorian Appropriations of Shakespeare and co-editor of Shakespeare and Appropriation and Harold Bloom's Shakespeare. His most recent work is "Epilogues and Prologues: Performing Shakespearean Criticism in the Restoration" which will appear in a new collection of essays, Prologues, Epilogues, Curtain-Raisers and Afterpieces: The Rest of the Eighteenth-Century London Stage (forthcoming Delaware Press 2005).

Issue cover with text: B&L Vol. 1, No. 1, 2005. Image: black and white etching of Shakespeare in western wear.

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Published

2005-05-01

Issue

Vol. 1 No. 1 (2005): Shakespeare in the American South

Section

Articles