Event:
Englisches Seminar, room 11
On Truth and Lies in a Swiftian Sense
In "Tim McGraw", the first song on Taylor Swift's eponymous 2006 debut, a boy flatters a girl by comparing her eyes to "Georgia stars", and she responds, "That's a lie." This begins Swift's exploration in songwriting of rhetoric, lies, and truth. Through the lies and truths of rhetoric, that song's speaker negotiates the meaning of her former relationship with herself and with her ex-boyfriend. Truth, lies, rhetoric, and the negotiation of truth, as well as rumors and the simultaneity of truth and lies, are also addressed in such later songs by Swift as "Dress" (from "reputation", 2017), "illicit affairs" ("folklore", 2020), "happiness" ("evermore", 2020), and "Cassandra" ("The Tortured Poets Department", 2024).
Export event as
iCal