Hédi A. Jaouad. “Limitless Undying Love”: the Ballad of John and Yoko and the Brownings
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Revue CMC Review (York University) Hédi A. Jaouad. “Limitless Undying Love”: The Ballad of John and Yoko and the Brownings. Manchester Center, Vermont: Shires Press, 2015. 132 pp. Hédi A. Jaouad is a distinguished scholar known for his expertise on Francophone North African (Maghrebi) literature. Professor of French and Francophone literature at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York, he is the Editor of CELAAN, the leading North American journal focusing on North African literature and language. He is also interested in Victorian literature, with particular concentration on Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, on whom he published a previous book, The Brownings’ Shadow at Yaddo (2014). However, his current book, “Limitless Undying Love”: The Ballad of John and Yoko and the Brownings, shows a whole other side to his scholarship, for it links the Brownings to those icons of contemporary popular culture, John Lennon and Yoko Ono. This is a concise, economical little study (132 pp.), but it manages, in brief compass, to be pluridisciplinary, building bridges between poetry, music, and painting. As he modestly proclaims, it shows “his passion for more than one liberal art” (7). The title, “Limitless Undying Love,” comes from a late John Lennon song, “Across the Universe.” Hédi Jaouad reminds us that the titular “Ballad” applies to both poetry and music. He compares what he has called 19th-century “Browningmania” to 20th-century “Beatlemania,” both of which spread to North America in what has been popularly described as a “British Invasion.” Lest the reader assume Jaouad is only tracing coincidental parallels, he makes it clear from the outset that John and Yoko actually saw themselves as reincarnations of the Brownings, and consciously exploited the similarities in their lives and careers.
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