Do You Believe Me Now?" Taylor Swift, "Cassandra" and the Reception of Sexual Violence - Dr Maxine Lewis (Auckland)

In 2024, Taylor Swift made a sustained act of Classical Reception via the song ‘Cassandra’. Swift wrote herself into Cassandra’s world, set up a metaphor in which she, too, is a prophet who was ignored, and brought the figure of the ‘mad’ Trojan woman into a whole new narrative. Since Swift’s intertextual lyricism encourages listeners to identify cycles of thematically connected songs spanning her albums, scholars in English and Communications noted that ‘Cassandra’ connects to several Swift songs that critique sexist double standards in a variety of settings: the workplace, the media and personal relationships. However, despite the importance of this topic to Swift and her fans, scholars have not yet examined ‘Cassandra’ closely, as an artistic work, as an act of Classical Reception, nor as part of that wider song cycle. In this seminar, I combine tools from Classical Reception Studies, Gender Studies, and Cultural Studies to examine the lyrics, narrative structure, mythical allusions and musical construction of ‘Cassandra’. We will move between ‘Cassandra’ itself and the other songs linked to it, and between Swift’s construction of Cassandra and the original figure from Greek myth who ‘speaks back’ to Swift between the lines. Ultimately, I will argue that, while Swift does not ever explicitly sing about the sexual violations that she has suffered, Cassandra’s own experiences allow fans and critics to hear ‘Cassandra’ and the songs connected to it as a critique of sexual violence against women.

Image credit: By Evelyn De Morgan - Flickr and [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=658924