The Band’s The Weight – a semio-cognitive narratological adventure
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Ulf Cronquist
Ulf Cronquist is a Ph.D. in English Literature, Gothenburg University, Sweden, and an M.A. in Cognitive Science, Lund University, Sweden. His research interests include cognitive poetics, metrics, song lyrics, diagrammatology – and semio-cognitive narratology. Recent publications are “Diagrams and mental figuration. A semio-cognitive analysis,” co-authored with Per Aage Brandt (2019), “Mollussuses and Other Metrical Measurements,” (2020) and “The Garden – Blending in the Semiotics of Songs,” co-authored with Per Aage Brant (2022).
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Torben Knap
Torben Knap has been working as an associate professor in literature, language and media at the universities of Copenhagen, Aarhus and Roskilde. He was a member of the research group at the Center for Semiotic Research in Aarhus from 1995 and onwards. Inspired by the endeavors of the group, he focused on the semiotic aspects of subjectivity in his teaching, making his way through a vast variety of topics. Knap has also been a teacher at The School of Writers under the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Knap is now retired and is currently working on his own fiction prose writing.
Abstract
After providing information about details of the song’s historical genesis and an exegetic Explication De Texte we proceed to analyze the lyrics as a modernist, surrealist narrative that is not always easy to make clear sense of, yet best can be understood as a classical structure of dramatic complications and possible catharsis with reference to Per Aage Brandt’s work on diegesis and narrative forces and spaces. Brandt’s contributions to cognitive narratology provide an extended framework of force dynamics, catastrophe theory and structuralist psychoanalysis – also with considerations of intentionality and imagination as integral parts of intersubjectively experienced story-worlds. Our empirical object of study departs from the original canonical recording song lyrics produced in 1968 on the album Music from Big Pink, where the many consecutive live performances by The Band and other artists remain quite faithful to the original text. To the best of our knowledge, a thorough scholarly analysis of the lyrics of The Weight has not yet been available until we now present our detailed, philological amplification on the details of this piece of art.
About the authors
Ulf Cronquist is a Ph.D. in English Literature, Gothenburg University, Sweden, and an M.A. in Cognitive Science, Lund University, Sweden. His research interests include cognitive poetics, metrics, song lyrics, diagrammatology – and semio-cognitive narratology. Recent publications are “Diagrams and mental figuration. A semio-cognitive analysis,” co-authored with Per Aage Brandt (2019), “Mollussuses and Other Metrical Measurements,” (2020) and “The Garden – Blending in the Semiotics of Songs,” co-authored with Per Aage Brant (2022).
Torben Knap has been working as an associate professor in literature, language and media at the universities of Copenhagen, Aarhus and Roskilde. He was a member of the research group at the Center for Semiotic Research in Aarhus from 1995 and onwards. Inspired by the endeavors of the group, he focused on the semiotic aspects of subjectivity in his teaching, making his way through a vast variety of topics. Knap has also been a teacher at The School of Writers under the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Knap is now retired and is currently working on his own fiction prose writing.
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© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editor’s Introduction
- Article
- Memorial speech delivered by Line Brandt, Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, France, 18 November, 2021
- Obituary
- From the blue waters of the Baltic and Kattegat to the Red Sands of Burgundy. Per Aage Brandt (April 26, 1944 – November 10, 2021)
- Articles
- The semiotic scoubidou – a short intellectual biography of Per Aage Brandt
- Pronouns, metonymy, and identity
- Who’s talking? Cognitive semiotics in the (new media) wild
- Tom Thomson’s Islands, Canoe Lake, 1916: a rock as the head of a bear
- The morphogenesis of religion and religious self-organization (with a focus on polytheism and Christianism)
- Germand Gladensvend and the monster
- The Band’s The Weight – a semio-cognitive narratological adventure
- Enunciation – some psychosemiotic reflections
- Rhythm in verse
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editor’s Introduction
- Article
- Memorial speech delivered by Line Brandt, Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, France, 18 November, 2021
- Obituary
- From the blue waters of the Baltic and Kattegat to the Red Sands of Burgundy. Per Aage Brandt (April 26, 1944 – November 10, 2021)
- Articles
- The semiotic scoubidou – a short intellectual biography of Per Aage Brandt
- Pronouns, metonymy, and identity
- Who’s talking? Cognitive semiotics in the (new media) wild
- Tom Thomson’s Islands, Canoe Lake, 1916: a rock as the head of a bear
- The morphogenesis of religion and religious self-organization (with a focus on polytheism and Christianism)
- Germand Gladensvend and the monster
- The Band’s The Weight – a semio-cognitive narratological adventure
- Enunciation – some psychosemiotic reflections
- Rhythm in verse
