Introduction

Dylan and the Nobel

This article argues for Bob Dylan’s nomination for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Traditional criteria for the award include outstanding idealism and work that benefits mankind, criteria that are easily met in Dylan’s case, given his activism in early 1960s civil rights, antiwar compositions, and beyond. Yet questions have been raised concerning Dylan’s eligibility for such an award. Can a literary prize go to a writer of song? Past Nobels in Literature display a breadth that admits such a lineage, however, and the connections between music and poetry have been noted by Laureates Rabindranath Tagore and W. B. Yeats. The Literature Prize has gone to historians and philosophers as well. Moreover, a close examination of selections from Dylan’s lyrics shows that as texts on the page, they compare favorably with literary masters such as Chekhov, Faulkner, and Rimbaud; that they resist many scholarly attempts at schematization testifies to their power as poetry. In terms of global appreciation, Dylan’s work has not merely survived but triumphed. From whatever standpoint Dylan’s work is viewed, this article argues that it deserves consideration for literature’s highest prize.

The Streets of Rome: The Classical Dylan

One of the preoccupations of Dylan scholarship has had to do with his intertexts, where his songs come from, and what meanings they derive from their places of origin, be they textual or musical, secular or religious, ancient or modern. In this article, Thomas explores Dylan’s contact with the ancient worlds of Greece and Rome, evident in particular in the Dylan of the last decade—that is, on the last three albums and in his “autobiography,” Chronicles: Volume One. This article counters the attacks of those who cannot distinguish plagiarism—a charge also leveled against the poet Virgil in antiquity—from creative reuse. Thomas discusses Dylan’s reperformance and lyrical renovation and variation from the perspective of the Homeric rhapsode, who like Dylan himself varies his initial text in performance, so creating constant shifts in meaning and emphasis.

A Face like a Mask and a Voice that Croaks: An Integrated Poetics of Bob Dylan’s Voice, Personae, and Lyrics

This article seeks to examine the literary pleasures derived from Bob Dylan’s songs, paying special attention to how Dylan’s poetical texts are performed and rhythmically rewritten by his voice, as well as the ways in which Dylan uses the songs to “write himself” through the creation of numerous and competing personae. Close reading of the lyrics, this article argues, must therefore be supplemented by a “poetics of the voice” and a detailed analysis of the theatricality of his “games of masks.” While a stylistic approach to the lyrics reveals a thrust towards writerly openness and new poetical idioms that fuse oral traditions with high poetry, the aesthetic and semantic uses Dylan makes of his voice are equally sophisticated. A study of Dylan’s “masks” will show that the artist uses archetypal poetic identities (prophet, trickster, man of sorrow, and so on) as fictional figurations of himself offered to the audience.

Living, Breathing Songs: Singing Along with Bob Dylan

Taking issue with approaches to Bob Dylan’s art that are preoccupied with his lyrics, this article suggests a route into thinking about his music by focusing on how Dylan’s vocal melodies work at the intersection of speech and singing. Drawing on Gino Stefani’s work on popular melodies, this article explores this issue through a discussion of how people sing along with Dylan’s songs at concerts. The discussion focuses on the song “It Ain’t Me Babe,” and examines more general points about the ways in which Dylan’s melodies connect with the everyday lives of his listeners.

Vocal Performance and Speech Intonation: Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone”

This article proposes a linguistic analysis of a recorded performance of a single verse of one of Dylan’s most popular songs—the originally released studio recording of “Like A Rolling Stone”—and describes more specifically the ways in which intonation relates to lyrics and performance. This analysis is used as source material for a close reading of the semantic, affective, and “playful” meanings of the performance, and is compared with some published accounts of the song’s reception. The author has drawn on the linguistic methodology formulated by Michael Halliday, who has found speech intonation (which includes pitch movement, timbre, syllabic rhythm, and loudness) to be an integral part of English grammar and crucial to the transmission of certain kinds of meaning. Speech intonation is a deeply-rooted and powerfully meaningful aspect of human communication. This article argues that is plausible that a system so powerful in speech might have some bearing on the communication of meaning in sung performance.

Never Quite Sung in this Fashion Before: Bob Dylan’s “Man of Constant Sorrow”

Many of Bob Dylan’s early compositions were drawn from pre-existing musical sources. This article traces the song “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow,” recorded by Dylan on his first LP, from its composition in the 1910s to the point at which the song entered Dylan’s repertoire in 1961. This article proposes detailed transcription and comparison as a way for scholars to address issues of song transmission and dissemination, as well as intellectual property rights.

“‘Sólo Soy Un Guitarrista’: Bob Dylan in the Spanish-Speaking World—Influences, Parallels, Reception, and Translation”

This article examines key aspects of the relationship between the work of Bob Dylan and the cultures of Spain and Spanish-speaking Latin America, including the Spanish/Latin American presence in Dylan’s songs and prose texts; the reception of Dylan’s work by Spanish-speaking critics and intellectuals; influences and parallels between Dylan and Spanish/Latin American musicians and writers, notably Federico García Lorca; and the translation of Dylan into Spanish. Dylan’s work is seen as a hybrid cultural phenomenon, generating connections between high-cultural and popular elements. Its two-way relationship with Hispanophone culture is seen as an interesting case of bridge-building between cultural systems.

Amerindian Roots of Bob Dylan’s Poetry

In an application of both the findings and the methods of structural anthropology as laid out in the works of Claude Lévi-Strauss and pursued in the works of Désveaux, this article seeks to account for traces of Amerindian folklore as source material in the writings of Bob Dylan. These influences are discussed in terms of some thematic and poetic images specific to Amerindian traditions, a conception of relationships between the sexes, and an eschatological design in which paradise is not situated in a differentiated time but in a parallel space—an outlook similar to many Amerindian worldviews. These influences are also interpreted with respect to style, borrowing the notion of cognitive style as defined by Elaine Jahner. As a conclusion, the author poses the question of transmission, considering emanations from learned culture as well as those from popular culture as possible channels of influences on Bob Dylan’s writings.

Bob Dylan, the Ordinary Star

This article provides a study of Bob Dylan’s public image as a “star” performer and examines what Dylan represented for his audiences with respect to the challenges of 1960s counterculture. This study focuses primarily on the image of Dylan in D. A. Pennebaker’s documentary film Don’t Look Back, which portrays Dylan when the star is only 23. A study of Pennebaker’s film shows how the filmmaker captures the paradox of Dylan’s star popularity in his refusal to portray the star, not only as a personal struggle, but as a cultural contradiction. The author further identifies a formal link between Dylan’s portrayal of the ordinary star and the minimalist aesthetic of cinéma vérité.

A Semantic and Syntactic Journey Through the Dylan Corpus

This article is a corpus-based exploration of Bob Dylan’s lexicon and syntactic structures based on an examination of the 400-plus songs published to date. By means of a simple concordance program, this article analyzes vocabulary frequencies for each main word class (nouns, verbs, and adjectives). A look at modal auxiliaries illustrate a definite mismatch between large corpora and our corpus, which the author interprets as a deliberate will of Dylan’s to avoid being viewed as a “prophet.” A short exploration of complex noun phrases (the 3 patterns N Ø N, N’s N, and N of N) sheds new light on the specific vehicles used by Dylan to convey his flamboyant imagery. Last but not least, a look at some syntactic idiosyncrasies (especially the use of “do” and the “a-Ving” form) shows a peculiar use of archaic syntax.

Nothing’s Been Changed, Except the Words: Some Faithful Attempts at Covering Bob Dylan Songs in French

This article deals with the French translation and performed covers of Bob Dylan songs, with a view to setting forth the general rules of adapting songs into another language. Using a large number of examples, this article first explains the difference between covering and translating, which is first and foremost a matter of meter and scansion. The article then explores two approaches to “faithfulness”: one can either be faithful to the sound of the initial words or to the meaning. What is at stake here is the concept of distance: we need intercessors, but still want them removed from the picture. Rather than creators, the singers covering foreign songs have to be considered as transmitters. That is why most of those efforts, whatever their commercial success, often fail to impress as genuine works of art.

“The Low Hum in Syllables and Meters”: Blues Poetics in Bob Dylan’s Verbal Art

Applying the linguistic category of style as put forth by Dell Hymes, this article seeks to identify the poetic devices borrowed by Bob Dylan from lyrics of traditional blues masters. The author highlights rhetorical form as it is connected to personal and cultural meaning in Blind Willie McTell’s “Broke Down Engine,” as recorded both by McTell and later by Dylan. Among the stylistic operations examined, we find a description of the phenomenon of songfulness as defined by Lawrence Kramer, metaphoric designs of Southern American English, expressive grammar deviations, and the syntactic formulation the author defines as “binary blues clauses,” commonly used in the AAB blues structure. The study is illustrated with a close analysis of language and genre use in Dylan’s “10,000 Men.”