In this new, unique book, author (and Boston University Humanities professor) Christopher 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."
By analyzing the music, lyrics, and biographies of The Grateful Dead and its members, Coffman demonstrates how they "drew on the canons of European and American literature to shape both the form and content of their creative work." Central to this is 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."
Click on each name to explore more about the main Grateful Dead lyricists, Robert Hunter and John Perry Barlow, plus the others, most notably Robert M. Petersen, who wrote a little bit for the band.
All quotes are from Duke University Press.
- KBOO