This PPT is prepared for classroom presentations of MA Semester 2, presented at the Department of English, MKBU. This presentation contains the discussion on Bob Dylan.

1. From Folk to Literature: Enduring
Influence of Bob Dylan’s Lyrics

2. Prepared by Trushali Dodiya
Roll no:- 19
Enrollment no:- 4069206420220011
Sem:- 2(M. A.) Batch:- 2022-24
Paper no. :-108 Paper Code:- 22401
Paper name:- American Literature
Submitted to:- Smt. S. B. Gardi Department of English,
MKBU
Dated on:- 13/03/2023
Email:- trushalidodiya84@gmail.com

3. ● Introduction
● Popular Songs and
Albums
● Popularity of Dylan
● Bob Dylan’s fame as a
literary writer
● Conclusion
Table of
Content

4. ● Robert Allen Zimmerman
● Born on 24 May 1941 in Duluth,Minnesota, USA
● Started singing in cafes and clubs of Greenwich village
● Nobel Prize in Literature 2016, "for having created new poetic expressions
within the great American song tradition."(“Bob Dylan – Facts - NobelPrize.org”)
● His Songs are rooted in the rich tradition of American folk music and
are influenced by the poets of modernism and the beatnik movement.
● From folk to Rock
● Social struggles, political protest, Love and religion (Kooper and Vincent)
● Moved from folk to rock music in the 1960s, infusing the lyrics of rock
and roll
Introduction

5. ● Like a Rolling Stone (1965)
● Visions of Johanna (1966)
● Ballad of a Thin Man (1965)
● Mr Tambourine Man (1965)
● Chimes of Freedom (1964)
● All Along the Watchtower (1967)
● Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door
(1973)
● Blowin’ in the Wind (1963)
● Make You Feel My Love (1997)
Popular Albums/Songs
● Another Side of Bob Dylan
● Highway 61 Revisited
(1965)
● The Times They Are A-
Changin'
● ‘Blood on the Tracks’
● ‘Bringing It All Back Home
● The Freewheelin’ Bob
Dylan’
● Time out of Mind

6. ● Dylan's work over the past twenty-five years has also been both timely
and late because some songs and some performances have a valedictory
quality to them, and show an increasing awareness of mortality
● T. S. Eliot's essay 'Ezra Pound, His Metric and Poetry' offers a possibly
relevant reflection: 'Any poet, if he is to survive beyond his twenty-fifth
year, must alter; he must seek new influences; he will have different
emotions to express' (Grafe et al.)
● Via Dylan's influence, popular music transformed into something akin to
collective storytelling.(Batchelor)
Popularity of Dylan

7. Bob Dylan’s fame as a literary writer
● The first person to get nobel prize for Songs
● The first American to win the prize since Ms. Morrison in 1993
● The Oxford Book of American Poetry included his song “Desolation
Row,” in its 2006 edition, and Cambridge University Press released
“The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan” in 2009
● Billy Collins, the former United States poet laureate says, “Most song
lyrics don’t really hold up without the music, and they aren’t supposed
to. Bob Dylan is in the 2 percent club of songwriters whose lyrics are
interesting on the page even without the harmonica and the guitar and
his very distinctive voice. I think he does qualify as poetry.”
● Swedish Academy credited Mr. Dylan with “having created new poetic
expressions within the great American song tradition.”(Chan)

8. ● In Nobel Prize speech Dylan talks about the
literary influences on him
● Don Quixote,Moby Dick, Robinson Crusoe,
Gulliver’s Travels, Tale of Two Cities
● Way of looking at life, an understanding of
human nature, and a standard to measure
things by. (“Bob Dylan – Facts - NobelPrize.org”)
● “I took all that with me when I started
composing lyrics. And the themes from those
books worked their way into many of my
songs, either knowingly or unintentionally. I
wanted to write songs unlike anything
anybody ever heard, and these themes were
fundamental.”(“Bob Dylan – Facts - NobelPrize.org”)

9. “That’s what songs are too. Our songs are alive in the land of
the living. But songs are unlike literature. They’re meant to be
sung, not read. The words in Shakespeare’s plays were meant
to be acted on the stage. Just as lyrics in songs are meant to be
sung, not read on a page. And I hope some of you get the
chance to listen to these lyrics the way they were intended to
be heard: in concert or on record or however people are
listening to songs these days. I return once again to Homer,
who says, “Sing in me, oh Muse, and through me tell the
story.”(“Bob Dylan – Facts - NobelPrize.org”)

10. ● By being sensitive to the various alienating situations he finds
himself in Dylan is able to capture the varied and settled ways in
which enlightenment society maintains its control.
● A Profound critic of the forms domination in late ‘Capitalist
Society. (Fluxman)
● Sophisticated critical perspectives
● Mythical touches - Human situation s unchangeable
● Political criticism
● Social institutions are approached through the artist’s own
experience.
● Self-criticism- personal realm- refuses involvement from confusion
of the society- evil mechanism of society(Fluxman)

11. “You should always take the best
from the Past, leave the worst back
there and go forward into the
Future.”
Bob Dylan

12. Batchelor, Bob. Bob Dylan: A Biography. ABC-CLIO, 2014.
“Bob Dylan – Facts - NobelPrize.org.” Nobel Prize, 5 June 2017,
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2016/dylan/facts/. Accessed 13 March 2023.
Chan, Sewell. “Bob Dylan Wins Nobel Prize, Redefining Boundaries of Literature (Published 2016).” The
New York Times, 13 October 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/arts/music/bob-dylan-
nobel-prize-literature.html. Accessed 13 March 2023.
Fluxman, Tony. “Bob Dylan and the Dialectic of Enlightenment: Critical Lyricist in the Age of High
Capitalism.” Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory, no. 77, 1991, pp. 91–111. JSTOR,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/41801927. Accessed 13 Mar. 2023.
Grafe, Adrian, et al., editors. 21st-Century Dylan: Late and Timely. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020.
Kooper, Al, and Rickey Vincent. “Bob Dylan | Biography, Songs, Albums, & Facts.” Encyclopedia
Britannica, 25 January 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bob-Dylan-American-
musician. Accessed 13 March 2023.
Work Cited

13. Thank you