Is It Romantic?: A Comparative Study of Chateaubriand’s René and Taylor Swift’s folklore

by Renaissance

I was utterly shocked and horrified by the wave of tweets in the wake of Midnight's release complaining about the supposed quality drop in Taylor Swift’s lyricism, particularly in comparison to the preceding folklore, evermore, and vault tracks. As a self proclaimed lover of women writers and a dyke myself, it is my instinct to defend any and all creative decisions that I enjoy. In taking off my lesbian hat and putting on my annoying-French-literature-major hat, I disagreed with people’s comparisons between folklore and Midnights for a completely different reason– people could not see that folkmore was a Romantic literary album and Midnights was not. I can’t tell if the lack of the general public’s ability to recognize the literary genre of which Taylor Swift was referencing was due to the drastic decrease in adult literacy or because people don’t think to consider pop albums as potential bodies of poetry, however, neither will stop me from doing a comparative study of Taylor Swift’s folklore (2020) and its genre father, François-René de Chateaubriand’s René (1801). By using modes of literary analysis within the pop culture sphere, one is able to approach Taylor’s writing outside of the capitaylism, girlboss complex that most who perceive her music limit it to. 

Before I can completely recontextualize folklore in a literary lineage, I want to acknowledge the contemporary trend it is most strongly associated with right now: cottagecore. 

Despite “cottagecore” having gained steam in 2018, quarantine and the pandemic thrusted this niche into the mainstream. Searching “cottagecore” on any major social media platform, and many obvious visual motifs present themselves, the noticeable imagery being an emphasis on solitude in nature. Cottagecore leans towards the quiet return to nature alone, simple pleasures, and an idealized fantasy rural life that is classless but maintains the illusory presence of wealth. It is important to note that although cottagecore pulls on homesteading culture and gardening visuals, performing any intensive manual labor is not cottagecore. The labor that is allowed in the cottagecore aesthetic are tasks like baking, painting, and crafts. The pristine white linen dresses, nails painted in soft pastels, and perfectly coiffed hair are never dirtied by laboring on the earth with which one lives. Additionally, the retreat into solitude as romanticized by cottagecore aesthetics and moodboards is greatly contrasted by the huge community and audience that has been formed by sharing and making cottagecore content. 

The Vox article “Once upon a time, there was cottagecore,” and The Take video essay “The Paradox of Cottagecore: Rejecting Hustle Culture,” both touch on how cottagecore is reminiscent of 19th century artistic movements and how folklore is seen as the pinnacle of the 2020s cottagecore trend, yet neither acknowledge how the scope of folklore spans beyond cottagecore as an aesthetic, and is fundamentally Romantic in its lyrical content. Taylor Swift’s ability to portray moments of happiness shrouded in sadness and grief, and use of the natural American landscape, provides the musical and textual basis for folklore’s cottagecore aesthetic. The majority of the writership concerning folklore only considers most of its narratives and aesthetics as existing exclusively in the contemporary. I think there is a richer intellectual possibility to understanding folklore as a literary album that places Taylor Swift and cottagecore’s digital omnipresence as a twenty-first century revival of European Romanticism.

The Romantic movement of nineteenth century Europe was born out of the preceding century of the Enlightenment. The legacy of Romanticism is most notably felt in the poetry and poetic style of the written fine arts. The period and its artistic legacy are principally identifiable by their elements of the subjectivity of the individual, nature, myth, folklore (ha), and prioritization of the aesthetic, etc, (René Wellek 147). Romanticism uses the figurative language of senses, the grandiose, and loneliness as ways to externalize expressions of the human experience, as a counter to the scientific lens and devotion to reason that defined the eighteenth century. 

Comparative literary critic, René Wellek, names François-René de Chateaubriand as one of the premiere figures within French Romanticism in his work, “The Concept of ‘Romanticism’ in Literary History II. The Unity of European Romanticism,” and agrees with F. R. de Toreinx that Chateaubriand is the father of French romanticism, who gave life to the movement in his novella, René (1801). He writes the story of René, a man who shares his life’s story to a priest and a sachem while sitting under a tree in the frontier of Louisiana. Chateaubriand’s principal character, René, rejects the approach of reason and science that had defined the era of Enlightenment of the eighteenth century by depicting his life through subjective internal dialogue and emotion. With the presence of these elements, Chateaubriand’s novella built the foundation for the poetic and literary landscape of the emerging Romantic movement. 

Wellek includes another figure of the birth of French Romanticism, Madame de Staël, as the godmother to the movement. He notes that F. R. de Toreinx is “silent about the mother.” It is through the particular use of language regarding parental relations, particularly the erasure of the maternal figure, that I am interested in exploring how the metaphorical familial tree of Romanticism extends into contemporary culture beyond Taylor Swift’s nod to William Wordsworth in “the lakes.” By understanding the Romantic movement as embodied through the specific elements of poetic style, symbolism, imagery, and myth used by the writer, one can approach Taylor Swift’s album folklore as a metaphorical grand-daughter of Chateaubriand’s René, breaking the silence on the feminine presence at the birth of the movement. In the context of this essay, I will be treating Swift’s lyrics as poems and I will exclusively base my analysis on the written content. I will not be participating in analysis of the musical composition, however, when relevant, I will reference the manner in which songs are sung and how that changes the meaning of words (eg; double entendres), comparable to analyzing spoken word poetry.

Although the Romantic movement is predominantly contained to the nineteenth century, Wellek (who was writing in the late 1940s) already conceded that romanticism was not necessarily a completely original movement within itself, calling it, “the revival of some old, but it is a revival with a difference; these ideas were translated into terms acceptable to men who had undergone the experience of the Enlightenment.” (Wellek 171) By adopting the conception of Romanticism through the lens of revival, Swift translates the poetic movement into terms acceptable to people who have undergone the rise in pervasiveness of modern technological media over the past 25 years. Her conservative references to technology like in “the 1,” “You meet some woman on the internet and take her home” (22) or in “cardigan,” “Vintage tee, brand new phone” or general references to concepts inaccessible to the nineteenth century romantics such as films or the mall, serve as cultural markers that the reader can understand. The content and the narrative of the songs themselves are deeply rooted in the poetic traditions of the previous centuries. The cultural translation of Chateaubriand from the arguable pre-Enlightenment ancestors does not bring into question his fatherhood of the movement; thus Swift’s cultural translations should not bring into question the validity of analyzing her work as its literary descendent. The motifs of the nineteenth-century Romantic movement, nature & melancholy and solitude & grief, are elements of the human condition. Their literary presence persists beyond the temporal boundaries of the period, as can be seen in the poetic genealogical relationship between Chateaubriand’s René and Taylor Swift’s folklore.

A principal element of Romanticism is its use of nature in symbolism, particularly nature’s power to engulf. To analyze René is to analyze the character’s relationship to nature, as introduced by the author in the second sentence of the novella: “His melancholy nature drew him constantly away into the depths of the woods. There he would spend entire days in solitude, a savage among the savages” (Chateaubriand 85). René’s relationship to the woods is a connection forged from the depression of his youth. Returning to the elements in solitude frequently gives him temporary peace by allowing him to take on the identity of “savage”; however, this relationship to nature does not provide René with an answer or cure to his melancholia. Through this introduction, the metaphysical tie between one’s nature (temperament and behavior) and the nature of the world encapsulates the text’s Romantic portrayal of René. Chateaubriand recontextualizes the literary figure’s relationship to the material world through pure subjectivity of the individual, which later throughout the century becomes a tenant of the Romantic movement. Chateaubriand expresses that René’s experience of the human condition consequently results in a state of melancholia. The rejection of reason in favor of the human subjective emotion is identifiable most clearly in figures of youth, as Chateaubriand conceptualizes in René.

At the birth of French Romanticism, there was a consistent motif of the individual engrossed by a sense of Americana, defined through a richly visual natural landscape. Chateaubriand exemplifies this in his descriptions of the novella’s distinct setting, the Louisan terrain: “In the west, the Meschacebe rolled its waves in majestic stillness, forming for the picture a border of indescribable grandeur,” (86). Chateaubriand crafts Rene’s view of the world in relation to his observations of nature and the literary style of Romanticism, indescribable grandeur and majesty. The west’s grandeur evokes the imagery of a new frontier and a new perspective of the world’s terrain as a platform for expressing subjective emotion. French Romanticism conceptualizes the frontier as existing on the boundary between spirituality and the natural elements. The author underscores this metaphor by having René sit between a priest (Father Souël) and the sachem under a tree as he tells his autobiography. Chateaubriand uses the Americana terrain to frame the birth of Romanticism, of which the subject is melancholy. The author presents this melancholy as part of the human condition and the natural conclusion to the protagonist’s life.

These being the conditions for the birth of Romanticism, there is precedent for grounds to analyze Swift’s pairing of the Americana landscape and youthful melancholia for being a direct descendent of the romantic literary tradition and outside of the visuals of 2020s cottagecore. Her instagram captions debuting the album, isolation leading to deep introspection and resulting in folklore is the heart of romantic poetry. Swift’s “seven” is a reflection on youth in nature from the adult perspective and two of the verses consist of speaking to a childhood best friend whom presumably the protagonist has lost contact with. Similar to Chateaubriand’s introduction René, the first image of the narrator captures him deep in the woods: “Please picture me in the trees,” (Swift lines 1-2). Swift uses literary apostrophe at the beginning of the song, calling out to an undefined recipient of her plea. Despite the isolation of being in the woods, both René and the unnamed subject of Swift’s “seven” are not completely alone; René is “among savages” (85) and the protagonist of “seven” is under the gaze of mystic viewership. When sung aloud, the vowel sound in “please” is elongated, shifting the word from a polite formality into a longing beg for the listener to visualize the narrator. That beg for choice in perception in “seven” is alone in the trees, the same as when the reader first sees René.

Following in the footsteps of the father of Romanticism, the narrative is set on the backdrop of the Americana landscape as well. “seven” continues,

I hit my peak at seven

Feet in the swing over the creek

I was too scared to jump in

But I, I was high in the sky

With Pennsylvania under me

Are there still beautiful things? (Swift lines 2-7)

As the verse develops in the second line, Swift plays with double entendre to include the motif of youthful melancholia while also setting up the scene of the natural landscape for the next two lines. Where Chateaubriand’s René’s youth is primarily rooted in young adulthood with some mentions of his childhood, Swift uses reflection of the self in “seven”– the only song on folklore to reference or utilize the album title functionally making it the titular song of the album– to glorify an age that is defined by rejection of reason, young childhood. Swift adopts the history of post-Enlightenment romantics and from this perspective the protagonist reflects that they hit their peak at age seven– “Before I learned civility.” The confession that the peak of the protagonist’s life was at seven imbues the piece with a nostalgic melancholia that is moderately autobiographical to the protagonist. Swift then layers this meaning by filling out the scene of a creek in Pennsylvania. “seven” has no reference to technology or allusions that limits its temporal location to the twenty-first century. Additionally, the location of the text being set east of the Mississippi allows Swift’s and Chateaubriand’s narratives to exist in this American Manifest Destiny period with a shared presence of an expanding frontier as the view to the west, allowing for the setting of the track to be retroactively placed at the birth of Romanticism alongside René. 

Over the course of the verse, Swift pulls the continuum of romantic melancholia through her protagonist’s life and from 1801 to 2020, “I was too scared to jump in,” a confession secreted from childhood and shared in autobiographical reflection; “Are there still beautiful things?” A question posed from the emotional adult is born while sitting in one’s melancholia in nature. The presence of the landscape and beauty exist without any direct relationship to labor in either René or “seven.” Swift also brings the romantic element of the prioritization of aesthetic and beauty into the contemporary digital landscape. René and seven’s protagonists both do not have defined sources of their depression, rather these emotions are framed as the natural conclusion to the life they are living, fundamental to their personhood and identity.

One of the most defining characteristics of the Romantic movement is its emphasis on the individual. Chateaubriand’s René is frequently finding himself alone or abandoned. René’s profound loneliness punctuates his “aversion for life,” (98) bringing him to the verge of suicide. Taylor explores a similar state of depression in “this is me trying,” “And maybe I don't quite know what to say / But I'm here in your doorway” (7-8). Both René and protagonist of “this is me trying” revere reunion as an alternative to suicide however it is unclear what comes from the song’s protagonist arriving at the door of their subject. In contrast to the song, suicidality drives Amelia back to René and the reunion with his sister fills him with overwhelming joy, “And so I welcomed Amelia with a kind of ecstasy in my heart. It had been so long since I had found someone who could understand me and to whom I could reveal my soul!” (100). The height of his joy in the presence of his sister makes his icarian fall into melancholy even more devastating. For Swift’s protagonist, the clawing desperation of the character is emphasized by the reprising line “at least I’m trying,” utilizing the romantic notions of the individual “I” and deep melancholia through her attempts to avoid the fall taken by René. 

Amelia’s motivation for leaving also informs the birth of religion, specifically that of the all-seeing God, in Romantic literature, “God is punishing me for it. It was for you alone that I remained in the world[…] But forgive me; I am upset by the sadness of having to leave you,” (102). Chateaubriand’s evasion of reason, dichotomized with both figures being occupied with the callings of the self, illuminates the beginning of the Romantic movement’s individualist perspective. Amelia’s own individuality is only present within the letter she writes, however, from the perspective of the principal Romantic René, Amelia is only an extension of his own desires. He narrates, “A feeling of pity had brought her back to me, but now, tired of her disagreeable duty, she was impatiently leaving me to my misery, though I had no one but her in the world,” (104). René’s conscience can only exist within the confines of his individuality and thus his empathy is translated into further isolating self-pity. When Amelia can no longer be understood as a possession of René, this is tantamount to dying. There are many examples of death as metaphor for the end of a relationship, but given Swift’s writing history it shouldn’t be surprising that she is attracted to the dramatics of romanticism. 

Chateaubriand shifts from melancholy on the backdrop of the Americana landscape to the Swiftian “insurmountable grief” on the backdrop of an isolated mystic convent. In the scenes depicting the day that Amelia is taking her vows to become a nun, Chateaubriand does not waver from centering René’s individuality, despite the reality that the ceremony is not about him. The day of her final vows is framed as a funeral for the death of the sister he once had. Chateaubriand’s decision to use the monastery as the institution that separates Amelia and René allows for René’s individuality to be the only subject of their relationship. The vocabulary for Amelia’s identity as “Sister” does not change, and yet because she will no longer be solely a sister to René, this is a death. Here, Chateaubriand is playing with double meaning as a way to recontextualize a single word, as Swift does in “seven,” “I hit my peak at seven / Feet in the swing” (Swift 1-3). The metaphorical death and bereavement of Amelia takes René beyond the melancholy of the woods, although the romantic language is consistent in a new setting of the church. “Overcome by the glorious sorrow of her saintly figure and crushed by the grandeur of religion, I saw all my plans of violence crumbling[…] and, instead of blasphemy and threats, I could find in my heart only profound adoration and sighs of humility,” (106).

 Until he sails to Louisiana, René’s solitude is defined by his separation from his sister in the convent by the sea. This time Chateaubriand uses nature as a means to materialize the breaking of relationships necessary to forge the loneliness of René in his own absolute individualism. The author frames René’s fate for solitude, abandonment, and grief as inevitable to his human condition which in turn is reflected in the natural world. Taylor incorporates the destructive potential of the sea in “my tears ricochet,” “I didn't have it in myself to go with grace / and so the battleships will sink beneath the waves” (30-1) Chateaubriand and Swift utilize the body of water as a means to mark the end of a battle. The former using it after René’s battle to keep his sister in public life and the latter referencing sinking battleships used in a fight against an unknown relation. Swift uses double entendre again with “wake;” she capitalizes on its associations with the disturbed water of a passing ship and a vigil. For both René and the protagonist of “this is me trying,” the sea is a means for physical and metaphysical separation.

The overwhelming sense of grief by an inevitable separation resulting in solitude is a narrative centered at the birth of Romanticism and in Swift’s song “hoax.” The first line of the song, “My only one,” (Swift line 1) mirrors René’s sentiments when Amelia leaves, “I had no one but her in the world,” (Chateaubriand 104). Swift displays her direct poetic lineage to the birth of Romanticism in the beginning of her song’s narrative by placing the perspective staunchly in the individual and she frames the subject solely through the lens of possession (extension of one’s self). Swift employs the ebbs and flow of intense emotions in succession that conclude in the loss of senses as well: “My smoking gun / My eclipsed sun /  This has broken me down” (2-4). Swift lays claim to the romantic tradition in her use of natural symbolism in her euphemism for death– the muse of the song is the narrator’s “eclipsed sun” breaking her down with grief. Within the first four lines, Swift is able to frame the romantic individualist perspective and the struggle of grief when death is the loss of possession of the desired, also Romanticized by the astronomical metaphor. The protagonist of “hoax” takes on the identity of loss as a result of romantic individualism, thus framing grief as the natural consequence of the human condition. While narratively I believe that “hoax” presents the most parallels to René’s separation from Amelia, “the lakes” lyric, “​​while I bathe in cliffside pools / With my calamitous love and insurmountable grief,” (22-3) best encapsulates the romantic portrayal of grief. Chateaubriand lives in the foreground of the literary setting of Swift’s writing.

Claiming her descendancy to the Romantic movement, Swift also incorporates the language and imagery of abandonment and religion, as paved by Amelia in René. “Stood on the cliffside screaming / ‘Give me a reason’ / Your faithless love’s the only hoax / I believe in” (Swift lines 9-11). When considering Swift within the context of the birth of Romanticism, there is room to argue that here she is drawing on the imagery of cliffs as nature’s barriers between the protagonist and the subject of the apostrophe. Swift’s protagonist screams “Give me a reason,” similar to René’s initial denial of Amelia choosing monastic life, “What secret was Amelia hiding from me? Who was forcing her into the religious life so suddenly?” (103), but in “hoax” we do not have any break from the protagonist’s individualism in the form of a letter from the subject. The use of first-person is not uncommon in popular music. Even so, the song’s unwavering claim to the subjective individual experience as a result of a betrayal allows for a romantic interpretation, in contrast to the commonly attributed diaristic writing style Swift is known for. Swift’s protagonist claims that the subject’s love is “faithless,” calling into question the authenticity of devotion. This is one of two times that Swift uses the “your” possessive, making explicit that it is the subject who is faithless. The conservative employment of “your” also serves to make the centralizations of the individual concrete, ultimately allowing for the first person perspective to be interpreted as Romantic rather than simply a means of pop narrative. Swift parallels Chateaubriand’s sentiments again when René calls into question Amelia’s devotion to the convent: “It occurred to me that Amelia might have fallen in love with a man, and dared not admit it,” (104). It is easier for René to believe that Amelia is faithless and simply in love with a man. The protagonist in “hoax” believes that their subject’s love, akin to Amelia, is devoid of faith. 

Swift assumes Romanticism’s use of religious motifs in “hoax” as the protagonist is still battling against grief and loss. The start of the third verse begins with “My only one / My kingdom come undone,” (Swift lines 38-39). Swift recontextualizes “my only one” in her own play on the “Our Father” prayer, “Thy kingdom come / Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven” as means to express that the loss of the subject is comparable to the end of the protagonist’s time on Earth. Swift manipulates biblical text and creates a new mythology of the individual, My kingdom. Wellek ties the romantics of the nineteenth century together by their shared relationship to mythology, most notably evidenced in Victor Hugo. Swift uses the tools of Romanticism beyond Chateaubriand, Wordsworth, and Hugo therefore avoiding the possibility of her work being credited to a single man, which has been the case for many of her albums. The use of diverse literary traits in the album shows that Swift is carving out her own space in the genre and not in the shadow of an established older man. These are elements that exist beyond the nineteenth century but become richer in meaning by using literary analysis.

Positioning Taylor Swift and François-René de Chateaubriand in the space of French Romanticism adopts a self-referential Romantic perspective. That is the solitude of the two writers separated by the natural passage of time. In returning to Wellek’s work on Romanticism in Europe, there is precedent for claiming authors to have direct literary kinship within the same movement regardless notable differences; 

The fact that Chateaubriand was conservative and Hugo ended in liberalism does not disrupt the continuity of French romanticism as a literary movement. On the whole, political criteria seem grossly overrated as a basis for judging a man’s basic view of the and artistic allegiance, (Wellek 171). 

Wellek argues for the existence of “the unity of the romantic movement,” (171) and by doing so pulls from various writers across Europe throughout the nineteenth century. Wellek spends time analyzing Victor Hugo’s presence in the tradition of romanticism: 

His prophetic fervor, intensity, and grandiose gestures may have become pretentious and absurd to generations who have lost this view of poetry. But Hugo marshaled all the possible arguments for the romantic view of nature, for man's continuity with nature, the great scale of nature, and the final perfection of man…(156)

The distance between Chateaubriand and Hugo, and the latter’s misunderstanding audience does not invalidate the romantic analysis. In adopting this perspective that the comprehension, or romantic recognition, from the readership does not negate the literary intent of the author, we can extend its application beyond the confines of the century and apply it to an analysis of Swift’s folklore. The lack of popular knowledge of French Romanticism within popular culture’s acclaim of folklore is not mutually exclusive to Swift’s ability to be considered a figure of Romanticism in the twenty-first century and a business savvy figure capitalizing off of shallow online projection.

In the argument that a political and geographical fringe does not negate the unity of a European Romantic movement that Wellek presents, I find that there are then grounds to assert the existence of a temporal fringe within Romanticism. Swift’s poetic work is exemplar of the Romantic literary continuum and expands the understanding of romanticism as a movement of translation and deepens the public’s ability to acknowledge Taylor Swift as a writer, first and foremost. In extending the parental metaphor of Chateaubriand's title, Father of French Romanticism, Swift’s descendancy from the literary father is through the lens of contemporary revival. By Wellek’s analysis of romantic poets, folklore’s poetic genealogical kinship falls within these bounds, as “all romantic poets conceived of nature” function “as an organic whole, on the analogue of man rather than a concourse of atoms–a nature that is not divided from aesthetic values, which are just as real (or rather more real) than the abstractions of science,” (161). If this is the tie that binds, then folklore can be argued to cut through the patriarchal lineage of the Romantic movement, and allow contemporary women writers to claim their right to be regarded as legitimate literary figures. Nineteenth century’s poets’ attraction to subjective nature identified in Romanticism can be translated into understanding Swift’s romantic approach to nature as a rejection of the devotion and objectivity of technology that has defined the decades preceding the album. Romantic poets return to solitude in nature and Swift follows. She uses French Romanticism’s birthplace on the Americana terrain and places folklore solidly beside it, in the trees and above the creek. The genetic poetic presence of Romantic poetry has not died with its father and sons, and Swift explicitly claims its life through the motifs of nature, melancholy, solitude, and grief. Taylor Swift’s last song of the album titled “the lakes” starts, “Is it romantic how all my elegies eulogize me?” (Swift line 1). Yes, folklore’s literary motifs and language are romantic, but the elegies of the great poets of the past do not eulogize the traditions of Swift’s romanticism.

Work Cited

de Chateaubriand, François-René, and Irving Putter. Atala ; René. University of California Press, 1980.

Jennings, Rebecca. “Once upon a Time, There Was Cottagecore.” Vox, Vox, 3 Aug. 2020, https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/8/3/21349640/cottagecore-taylor-swift-folklore-lesbian-clothes-animal-crossing. 

McCullough, Susannah, and Debra Minoff. The Paradox of Cottagecore: Rejecting Hustle Culture. YouTube, YouTube, 1 May 2021,

Accessed 6 Jan. 2023. 

Swift, Taylor. 2020. Folklore

Wellek, René. “The Concept of ‘Romanticism’ in Literary History II. The Unity of European Romanticism.” Comparative Literature, vol. 1, no. 2, 1949, pp. 147–72. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1768325.

“What Is Romanticism?” Introduction to Romanticism, https://uh.edu/engines/romanticism/introduction.html#:~:text=Any%20list%20of%20particular%20characteristics,and%20worship%20of%20nature%3B%20and.