New Publication: ‘The Closest Thing in History’ by John Webster
The K-SAA is excited to share a new publication from John Webster that relates the lives and works of Keats, Byron, Leigh Hunt, and Percy Shelley to The Beatles. Exploring celebrity from “Byronmania” to “Beatlemania”—and asking how art and personal politics intertwine—this book provides a contemporary mirror to the “Big 6” Romantic poets. The following is from the author’s press release:
The Closest Thing in History invites the reader to ‘cast off the apparent distinctions between classic poetry and rock ‘n’ roll, bring the eras of the Romantics and The Beatles together, and engage with both, toggling between them in a playful yet fertile exercise. Arguing that The Beatles were a kind of exploded version of the quartet Keats, Byron, Leigh Hunt and Shelley, John Webster opens with three chapters that lay out some broad similarities between them. Elvis Presley and William Wordsworth may seem to be unlikely bedfellows, but they both had galvanising effects on their younger contemporaries – and both turned against them in the end. Then, comparing how both had similar experiences of inspiration, we find John Lennon talking in terms reminiscent of Plato’s ‘Ion’ and Shelley’s ‘A Defence of Poetry’. The first section ends with a comparison of Beatlemania and ‘Byron-mania’, drawing on Richard Cronin’s essay ‘Mapping Childe Harold I and II’ to uncover some of the deeper forces behind the sensation caused by The Beatles.
The middle section then tells the story of the Romantics and their interlocking relationships, bringing in Beatles parallels in the process. Leigh Hunt is presented as a kind of Ringo figure, less of a creative force than the others but a supportive figure throughout, the fates of abandoned wives Harriet Shelley and Cynthia Lennon are put side by side, Shelley’s ‘Prometheus Unbound’ is cast as a forerunner of the Beatles’ ‘Yellow Submarine’, and their Apple Corps project finds a historic echo in the Romantics’ publishing project from Pisa, ‘The Liberal’. These kinds of equivalences are more fully explored in the final section, which considers the legacy of the Romantics and what it could reveal about The Beatles’ future trajectory and their place in history.
John Webster’s tantalising book offers original insights and telling perspectives on two great cultural forces. It will be of interest to Beatles fans, scholars and students of Romanticism, and those interested in the relationship between classic poetry and the newer force of rock ‘n’ roll.
