Overview

In Clowns in the Burying Ground, Christopher K. Coffman presents intertextual readings of the Grateful Dead and their lyrics to argue that the band’s lyricists were deeply and significantly engaged with the literary tradition. Through an analysis of their music, lyrics, and biographies, Coffman shows how the group and its individual members drew on the canons of European and American literature to shape both the form and content of their creative work. Coffman draws on the language of the “literary fragment,” as conceived by German Romantic philosophers and their intellectual heirs, to identify how the Grateful Dead’s lyricists employed intertextuality, allusion, and other strategies to explore how meaning takes shape at the boundary between poetry and philosophy. From Shakespeare to “Shakedown Street,” Clowns in the Burying Ground demonstrates the Dead’s literary depth and how their most successful lyrics and performances walk the line between creation and chaos.

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9781478033202

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Reviews

""Critics have long praised the Grateful Dead';s music and lyrics for their power and evocativeness, but we have never had a sustained examination of how the band tapped the wellsprings of Western literature as inspirations and influences. Coffman's timely analysis provides a groundbreaking study that will appeal to both aficionados and to those curious about why the Dead have attracted so many generations of thoughtful listeners.""--Nicholas Meriwether, series editor of Studies in the Grateful Dead ""Coffman's literary analysis of the lyrics is bolstered by deft attention to the sonic force-fields and amplified techno-sounds that make the popular music of a group like the GD so vital to the world-making and soul-transforming power recognized and needed by its rock audience across different generations and world contexts. Coffman's approach enacts how the GD lyrics and music still are haunting and can live on and on across generations and contexts.""--Rob Wilson, author of, Oceanic Becoming: The Pacific beneath the Pavements

“Critics have long praised the Grateful Dead’s music and lyrics for their power and evocativeness, but we have never had a sustained examination of how the band tapped the wellsprings of Western literature as inspirations and influences. Coffman’s timely analysis provides a groundbreaking study that will appeal to both aficionados and to those curious about why the Dead have attracted so many generations of thoughtful listeners.”—Nicholas G. Meriwether, series editor of Studies in the Grateful Dead “Coffman’s literary analysis of the lyrics is bolstered by deft attention to the sonic force-fields and amplified techno-sounds that make the popular music of a group like the GD so vital to the world-making and soul-transforming power recognized and needed by its rock audience across different generations and world contexts. Coffman’s approach enacts how the GD lyrics and music still are haunting and can live on and on across generations and contexts.”—Rob Wilson, author of, Oceanic Becoming: The Pacific beneath the Pavements

Author Information

Christopher K. Coffman is Master Lecturer of Humanities at Boston University. He is the author of Rewriting Early America: The Prenational Past in Postmodern Literature and an editor of After Postmodernism: The New American Fiction and William T. Vollmann: A Critical Companion.

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