Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Progressive Rock, Metal, and the Literary Imagination written by Chris Anderton and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2025-02-26 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Handbook illustrates the many ways that progressive rock and metal music forge striking engagements with literary texts and themes. The authors and their objects of analytic inquiry offer global and diverse perspectives on these genres and their literary connections: from ancient times to the modern world, from children’s literature to epic poetry, from mythology to science fiction, and from esoteric fantasy to harsh political criticism. The musical treatments of these literary materials span the continents from South and North America through Europe and Asia. The collection presents critical perspectives on the enduring and complex relationships between words and music as these are expressed in progressive rock and metal. The book is aimed primarily at an academic market, valuable for second- through final-year students on undergraduate courses devoted to both popular music and to literary studies, and to postgraduate programs and researchers in a range of fields, including popular music studies, musicology, creative music performance and composition, songwriting, literary studies, narrative studies, folklore studies, science fiction studies, cultural studies, liberal studies, and sociology, and for media and history courses that have an interest in the intersection of narratives, music, and society.