Howlin’ at the Neon Moon: Lunar Topoi in the Rhetoric of Country Music
Location
Janet Ayers Academic Center, JAAC 4094
Presentation Type
Presentation
Start Date
19-9-2019 10:00 AM
Description
Over the past near-century, a handful of familiar themes—what Aristotle would have called topoi—have defined the genre of country music: love, heartbreak, work, mama, trucks. You know the joke: What do you get when you play a country song backward? You get your job back, you get your truck back, you get your wife back.... These topics are so well-worn that they’ve become a punchline. In this presentation I explore the moon as a similarly consistent (if less remarked) topos in country music. Why are country songwriters from Hank Williams to Kacey Musgraves so fixated on the moon?
Recommended Citation
Blomeley, Sarah, "Howlin’ at the Neon Moon: Lunar Topoi in the Rhetoric of Country Music" (2019). Humanities Symposium. 14.
https://repository.belmont.edu/humanities_symposium/2019/2019/14
Howlin’ at the Neon Moon: Lunar Topoi in the Rhetoric of Country Music
Janet Ayers Academic Center, JAAC 4094
Over the past near-century, a handful of familiar themes—what Aristotle would have called topoi—have defined the genre of country music: love, heartbreak, work, mama, trucks. You know the joke: What do you get when you play a country song backward? You get your job back, you get your truck back, you get your wife back.... These topics are so well-worn that they’ve become a punchline. In this presentation I explore the moon as a similarly consistent (if less remarked) topos in country music. Why are country songwriters from Hank Williams to Kacey Musgraves so fixated on the moon?
Comments
Convocation Credit: Society and the Arts & Sciences