ABSTRACT
“‘All Romantics Meet the Same Fate Someday’: Joni Mitchell, Blue, and Romanticism” examines Mitchell’s (1943–) 1971 album Blue through the lenses of German Romanticism, including the work of Friedrich Schlegel, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Ludwig Tieck, Goethe, Novalis, and others. Clason is not so much concerned with establishing influence as with examining Blue against Romantic paradigms to establish how these paradigms still assert themselves in the present. These paradigms include the blending, coalescing, and juxtaposimg forms; Romantic tropes and Romantic irony; folk culture; the artist as prolific in multiple media; Romantic longing; and even the color “blue” itself through die Blaue Blume. Clason maps these affinities across Mitchell’s music and lyrics, registering the complexity of her work across multiple genres and media and its deep affinities with German Romanticism of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
