Music, Bonding, and Personal Growth
Merle Haggard's Musical Journey toward Wholeness. Discussion of "A Place to Fall Apart, A Reading of Merle Haggard's Music" by Richard P. Wheeler
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 18066916 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Howard M Katz (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 75 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 441-453 |
| Publication date | 2018-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American imago (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0065-860X • E-ISSN: 1085-7931 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/aim.2018.0024 |
| OpenAlex | W2889578557 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 4 |
This paper is a scholarly and soulful inquiry into the iterative relationship between Merle Haggard's struggle to find his way through life and his artistic quest. The paper explores the roots, the meaning, and the working through of personal challenges through Haggard's songwriting and performing, aptly applying psychoanalytic perspectives on development and adaptation to traumatic loss. The analysis follows from biographical and autobiographical accounts of Haggard's life placed in relation to the lyrics of his songs, and explores the reactions of the young Merle to the painful loss of his father and the ambivalent attachment to his mother. Wheeler's approach to the music focuses on the poetry of the lyrics, employing the same kind of scholarly textual analysis that has characterized his considerations of the works of Shakespeare, D.H. Lawrence, and others
Aesthetics · Ambivalence · Art · Epistemology · Linguistics · Literature · Lyrics · Meaning (existential) · Musical · Poetry · Psychoanalysis · Psychoanalytic theory · Reading (process) · Relation (database) · Diverse Music Education Insights · Music History and Culture · Musicology and Musical Analysis · Philosophy · Psychology
| Highly cited | No |
|---|