Silenced Prophets: Feminist Classical Reception in Taylor Swift’s “Cassandra”

This study aims to contribute to the field of classical reception in modern women’s writing by examining Taylor Swift’s song “Cassandra” from the 2024 album The Tortured Poets Department. The song is read as a significant intervention in the wave of contemporary Greco-Roman myth retellings that foreground silenced or marginalised voices from the classical canon. Focusing on the figure of Cassandra, the study explores how the song rewrites her myth to address silencing, credibility, and institutional complicity within the cultural context of the #MeToo movement. Drawing on classical reception theory, feminist literary criticism, and trauma studies, the analysis offers a close reading and intertextual comparison with Swift’s classical sources, including Aeschylus’s Agamemnon and Euripides’s Trojan Women. Special attention is given to Swift’s adaptation of key motifs (prophecy, confinement and serpents) and to her construction of a polyphonic narrative voice, through which Cassandra emerges as a figure who speaks with multiple, layered voices. The findings demonstrate that “Cassandra” transforms myth into a vehicle for contemporary critique, highlighting enduring structures of gendered disbelief. The paper concludes that Swift’s work exemplifies how popular music functions as a powerful site of classical reception, expanding the reach and political resonance of myth in modern culture.