What is a poem? What is a song? When, how, and where do they coincide, complement each other, differ? Popular singers who write their own songs are often referred to as troubadors and bards—those ancient terms for the earliest singers of songs that became categorized and canonized as epic and lyric poetry. This course will follow the development of rock and roll as a leading music form of the 20thcentury: where it comes from, how songs empowered people and powered politics, why some artists became idolized and others are nearly forgotten, how movements in music, and specific songs and songwriters, inform and help shape popular culture today. We will concentrate on songs written in English rather than in translation. Beginning with Francis Johnson, Stephen C. Foster, Thomas Moore, and the Victorian music hall, we will study pioneers of rhythm and rhyme from Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Muddy Waters, Charlie Patton, and Jimmie Rodgers to the proto-rock sensations of the 1950s culminating in Bill Haley’s 1954 “Rock Around the Clock.” Lyricists from the 1960s, when rock and roll became the dominant musical form, through branches like punk and folk rock, up to the early 21stcentury, when rock’s diffusion through other genres of music ended its dominance, will be the chief focus of the class, among them Buddy Holly, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin, Joni Mitchell, Freddie Mercury, Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter, Elton John, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Carole King, Van Morrison, Stevie Nicks, Ray Davies, Patti Smith, and Prince.