A Northern “Ode on Melancholy”?: The Music of Joy Division

2018

Even decades after its sudden demise, Joy Division indisputably remains one of the most seminal proponents of post-punk. This chapter aims to examine Joy Division in relation to both Romanticism and the Gothic. The former manifests itself on two different, yet interrelated levels: first in terms of the Romantic “mythos of the doomed young artist” against the backdrop of industrial Manchester, and then as it is understood through the lenses of Ian Curtis’s persona and Anton Corbijn’s biopic Control, both of which are shown to establish Joy Divison’s music as Gothic texts.