Taylor Swift, L.E.L. and the Poetics of Reciprocity

This article considers the confessional lyrics of Taylor Swift through the lens of L.E.L. an early Victorian poetess whose poetics prefigures Swift’s. Both writers deal in romantic, quasi-autobiographical lyrics that appeal primarily to young women, and both use their writing as a means of establishing a sense of intimate, reciprocal relationship between themselves and their audiences. In placing these writers in conversation with one another, this article positions Swift as a contemporary evolution of L.E.L. and draws attention to the ways in which Swift’s most recent work departs from her earlier poetics of reciprocity.