Man, it’s been a while! Today we’re covering the newly released I Knew It, I Knew You from Toy Story 5 and current #1 on the Billboard 100 chart.

Uncle Jerry takes us through the poem, talking all about childhood and friendship and how both this song and the movie franchise showcase the magic of being a kid. 

We bring in a special guest–an expert–at the end to grade the song.

Works Cited:

Homonym

Runnin’ Wild – Some Like It Hot

Volta

Emjambment

Epiphora or Epistrophe

Leaves of Grass – Walt Whitman

Anagnorisis

Epizeuxis

Dramatic Irony

Mnemonic

I Knew It, I Knew You Visualizer

The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix

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We are taking it back to the 1920s (and then the 1970s) today with Clara Bow from The Tortured Poets Department. Uncle Jerry talks all about the early film industry, Stevie Nicks, the violence of beauty and fame for women, and so much more. 

Works Cited:

Clara Bow

The Jazz Singer (1927)

Greta Garbo

Douglas Fairbanks

John Gilbert

Michael Curtiz

Casablanca (1942)

The Lodger (1947)

World’s Columbian Exposition (1893)

The Birth of a Nation (1915)

It (1927)

It – Elinor Glyn – Aff Link

Caesura

Horatio Alger

Death of a Salesman – Arthur Miller

A Cool Million – Nathanael West – Aff Link

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus – Christopher Marlowe

To an Athlete Dying Young – A. E. Housman

Idle Fame – John Clare

The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson – Aff Link

Fame is a fickle food (1659) – Emily Dickinson

Fame is a bee. (1788) – Emily Dickinson

Mirrorball/Clara Bow Mash-up

The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix

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We’re back in our folklore era with mirrorball today! Uncle Jerry had some extra time with this one and doesn’t even know where to start the discussion. We get into the uses of mirrors in folklore, how this was made during the pandemic, and discuss the many facets of celebrity. Make sure you come back next week for another song discussing the nature of fame.

Works Cited:

The Philosophy of Reflection: Mirrors as Symbols Across Cultures

Catoptromancy

Through the Looking Glass – Lewis Carroll – Aff Link

Perseus and Medusa

A Discovery of Witches (2018)

'Spirit mirror' used by 16th-century occultist John Dee came from the Aztec Empire

Conceit

Anaphora

Inclusio

Ouroboros

Albertus Magnus and the Magic Mirror

Loafing Him was Bread T-Shirt 

The House of Fame – Geoffrey Chaucer

The Temple of Fame – Alexander Pope

The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix

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FIXED AUDIO!

Call all your friends and cousins, we’re finally covering How Did It End? from The Tortured Poets Department. Uncle Jerry finds tons of beautiful poetics and dark humor in this one, and Angela discusses its connections to both The Prophecy and But Daddy I Love Him. If you want to vote for a specific song for June, join us on Patreon to play along!

Works Cited:

General Reference Pronoun

Autofiction as a Doorway Into Truth

Conceit – Literary term

Come One, Come All – All Time Low

Slant Rhyme

"Now give three cheers" – HMS Pinafore

The Telephone Hour – Bye Bye Birdie

The Raven – Edgar Allan Poe

Annabel Lee – Edgar Allan Poe

To -- -- --. Ulalume: A Ballad – Edgar Allan Poe

Hyperion – John Keats

Ode to a Nightingale – John Keats

A Rose for Emily – William Faulkner

The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix

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Buckle up for a long one! We are flooring it through the fences today with But Daddy I Love Him from Taylor Swift’s 2024 album, The Tortured Poets Department. We discuss common movie tropes, conservative small towns, and the lyrics Angela wants to have tattooed from this song.

Works Cited:

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell – Susanna Clarke – Aff Link

East of Eden – John Steinbeck – Aff Link

Rebel With a Cause (1955)

The Notebook (2004)

Inside Daisy Clover (1965)

How The West Was Won (1962)

Anaphora

Epiphora (or epistrophe)

the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls – e.e. cummings

Footloose (1984)

The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix

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In this episode, we are tackling marjorie, a track from Taylor Swift’s evermore album from 2020. Uncle Jerry teaches us about sentimentalism in literature, and Angela blows his mind by telling him the real life Marjorie’s backstory. 

Works Cited:

Aphorism

David Hume

Immanuel Kant

Sentimentalism

Sentimental Novels in Early American Fiction

The Man of Feeling – Henry Mackenzie – Aff Link

Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded – Samuel Richardson – Aff Link

Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen – Aff Link

A Treatise of Human Nature Paperback – David Hume – Aff Link

The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix

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We’re doing something a bit different today! Some conversations have popped up in various comment sections about why Uncle Jerry prefers specific types of poetry, and which lenses we use to dissect those poems, whether we’re talking about Charles Dickens, Emily Dickenson, or Taylor Swift. So Uncle Jerry put together a lecture explaining how and why he views certain poetic styles the way he does, and explains the different criticism styles and theories we use to understand a poem’s meaning and impact.

Hope you enjoy! Please leave any questions in the comments that he can answer either here or in a later episode. 

Works Cited:

Marxist Literary Criticism

Post-Colonial Criticism

Reader-response theory

Key Theories of Wolfgang Iser

Is There a Text in This Class? – Stanley Fish – Aff Link

Psychological Criticism

Feminist Theory

New Criticism

Felicia Dorothea Hemans

On the Intentional Fallacy

Hyperion – John Keats

Affective Fallacy

Queer Theory

Deconstruction

Semiotics

Critical Race Theory

New Historicism

Stephen Greenblatt and New Historicism

Sketches by Boz – Charles Dickens – Aff Link

Sonnets

Shakespeare's Sonnets & Poems – William Shakespeare – Aff Link

Limerick

Haiku

Ballad Meter (or Common Measure)

Villanelle

Concrete Poetry

Life Studies – Robert Lowell – Aff Link 

The Collected Poems – Sylvia Plath – Aff Link

My Papa’s Waltz – Theodore Roethke

The Real Slim Shady – Eminem

Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture Paperback – Dana Gioia – Aff Link

A Bit Much – Lyndsay Rush – Aff Link

Lyndsay Rush – Instagram

Amanda Gorman

The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix

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We are getting witchy today as we dive deep into The Prophecy from Taylor Swift’s 2024 album, The Tortured Poets Department. Uncle Jerry teaches us about some specific references to tarot and the occult in literature, and how that shaped a few of his interests. Angela tells the story of a tarot reading that Taylor received from a friend, and how she thinks it inspired this song.

Works Cited:

The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats – William Butler Yeats – Aff Link

Rosicrucian Fellowship

The Secrets of the Belline Oracle – Sylvie Steinbach – Aff Link

Crowley Thoth Tarot Deck

Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards – The Morgan Library

Visconti Sforza Tarot Cards Cards – Stuart R. Kaplan – Aff Link

Miniature Rider-Waite® Tarot – Pamela C. Smith – Aff Link

Rider Waite Gold Foil Tarot Deck – Aff Link

The Original Rider Waite: The Pictorial Key To The Tarot: An Illustrated Guide – A.E. Waite – Aff Link

Tarot Revelations – Joseph Campbell, Richard Roberts – Aff Link 

A to z Horoscope Maker and Delineator – Llewellyn George – Aff Link

A Treatise on the Astrolabe – Geoffrey Chaucer – Aff Link

Antithesis – Rhetorical Device

Gimpel the Fool: And Other Stories – Isaac Bashevis Singer – Aff Link

The Miller’s Tale – Geoffrey Chaucer

Morphology of the Folktale – V. Propp – Aff Link

Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index

Taylor Swift’s Tarot Card Revelation Proves None of Travis Kelce Romance Was Accidental

Inclusio

The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix

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We’ve made it to the third and final episode of our beloved Folklore Love Triangle! We hope you’ve enjoyed this little series as much as we have. This episode dives into all the poetry and themes of cardigan, and then Uncle Jerry wraps up all the themes and questions and answers found in these three songs.

Works Cited:

Rashomon Effect

The Rashomon Effect: When Ethnographers Disagree – Karl G. Heider

Disnarration and the Unmentioned in Fact and Fiction – Marina Lambrou – Aff Link

Disnarration and the performance of storytelling in Taylor Swift’s folklore and evermore

The Blind Man and The Elephant

Split Narratives or Fragmented Narratives

Enjambment 

Epistrophe

Anaphora

The Longest Time – Billy Joel 

Love Stinks – The J. Geils Band

The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix

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We’re back for the second installment of the folklore love triangle! Uncle Jerry really changed his tune on these lyrics, both as a poem and as a song, while Angela notices some “teenage diction” that she’s never picked up on before. Come back next week to wrap this all up with us!

Works Cited:

Rashomon Effect

The Rashomon Effect: When Ethnographers Disagree – Karl G. Heider

Disnarration and the Unmentioned in Fact and Fiction – Marina Lambrou – Aff Link

Disnarration and the performance of storytelling in Taylor Swift’s folklore and evermore

The Blind Man and The Elephant

Split Narratives or Fragmented Narratives

Winesburg, Ohio – Sherwood Anderson – Aff Link

Spoon River Anthology – Edgar Lee Masters – Aff Link

The Flowers of Evil – Charles Baudelaire – Aff Link

Flipped (2010)

Apophasis

Hyperbole

Book of Genesis

The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix

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