"The ghosts of Saturday night" : Tom Waits and his relationship to American culture

dc.contributor.authorHutson, Anna Elizabethen_US
dc.date.accessioned2024-08-14T17:26:27Z
dc.date.available2024-08-14T17:26:27Z
dc.date.copyright1998en_US
dc.date.issued1998
dc.degree.departmentDepartment of English
dc.degree.levelMaster of Arts M.A.en
dc.description.abstractThis thesis examines Tom Waits' changing relationship with American culture. It identifies and chronicles three phases of his career. 1. His use of certain identifiable American images, both in his music and his personae, in order to evoke nostalgia. This period is strongly characterised by the obvious influence of the Beat writers, specifically Jack Kerouac. 2. A transitory and experimental phase. During this period, he released a trilogy, the postmodern tone which runs through this work afforded him the detachment necessary to help him to break free of his self-created neo-Beat image. 3. This period can be seen as the culmination and combination of the two prior stages. While he is decrying the state of America on Bone Machine, he is doing so in a specifically American form, the jeremiad. The form thus contradicts the text. This thesis will show that while his treatment of America changed, dependent upon personal and cultural shifts, his focus was unerringly on American culture. All lyrical quotations have been copied exactly, when possible, from the liner notes. Otherwise, !me breaks have been inserted according to the singer's phrasing.
dc.format.extent81 pages
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1828/18267
dc.rightsAvailable to the World Wide Weben_US
dc.title"The ghosts of Saturday night" : Tom Waits and his relationship to American cultureen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US

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