Rock of pages : the literary tradition of 1980s heavy metal / Jesse Kavadlo.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kavadlo, Jesse, author.

Contributor:

Bloomsbury (Firm), publisher.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Heavy metal (Music).

Heavy metal (Music) in art.

Music and literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (256 pages)

Edition:

1st edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2025.

Summary:

Rock of Pages provides contexts and close readings of 1980s heavy metal with forty years of hindsight, drawing upon analytical frameworks usually associated with literature and literary studies. Based on decades of work as a professor of literature and as a musician, Jesse Kavadlo analyzes the ways in which 1980s heavy metal aligns with and develops many of the themes prevalent in the canon of literature. In doing so, the book examines some of the contexts of 1980s heavy metal, including Cold War, the rise of MTV, and the formation of the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) and subsequent congressional hearings. Rock of Pages takes the PMRC’s own objections to heavy metal and uses them as titles and topics to analyze the intersections between heavy metal and literature: representations of violence, but the connected concerns about justice; images of substance abuse, and the interrelated issues of obsession, madness, suicidal ideation; sex and love, with, concomitantly, representations of women and relationships between men and women; and the references to the occult, with the depictions of Satan, the afterlife, and morality on earth itself. In doing so, the book suggests that 1980s heavy metal displayed more artistry and intelligence than people imagine, but that literature is rebellious and subversive as well.

Contents:

Acknowledgements List of Figures Preface: My Double Life Introduction: Won’t Somebody Please Think of the Children? Chapter 1: Nothing. But: A Good Time? Heavy Metal, the Cold War, and the Long 1980s Chapter 2: V for Violence Chapter 3: D/A for Drugs and Alcohol Chapter 4: X for Sexually Explicit Chapter 5: O for Occult An Ode to Guitar Solos Conclusion: Let Me Get It Back Notes Selected Bibliography Selected Discography

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9798765140840

OCLC:

1520505970