Expand+This course considers Bob Dylan as part of the great Modernist movement that shaped the arts in the 20th century. Like other Modernists, Dylan is an artist with a complex relationship to tradition. He deals in myths and archetypes, but breaks convent...

Hide-This course considers Bob Dylan as part of the great Modernist movement that shaped the arts in the 20th century. Like other Modernists, Dylan is an artist with a complex relationship to tradition. He deals in myths and archetypes, but breaks conventions. His songs have layered and ambiguous meanings. He often seems to present many perspectives at once. He expresses succinct and striking thoughts, but also offers partial or veiled thoughts and surprising leaps of association.

In this class we will read some of what has been written about Dylan, and exchange our own ideas about his work. At each meeting, we will discuss five to ten songs, listening to versions recorded by him and other performers. Each meeting will offer an opportunity to update and extend our own individual answers to the question, “What has Bob Dylan achieved as an artist?”

Many people have deep, personal responses to Bob Dylan’s songs, tied up with memories of different times in their lives; he has been a voice of youth, and of age, and of every stage in between. Since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, there has been a fresh interest in thinking about him not just as a musician but as a writer.

This course considers Dylan as part of the great Modernist movement that shaped the arts in the 20th century—right along with Pablo Picasso in painting, Bertolt Brecht in theater, or James Joyce and Samuel Beckett in English prose writing. Like other Modernists, Dylan is an artist with a complex relationship to tradition; his roots in it are deep, but his uses of it are challenging and unsentimental. He deals in myths and archetypes, but breaks conventions. His songs have layered and ambiguous meanings. Like the Cubists in visual art, he often seems to present a glimpse of many perspectives at once. He turns away from direct and descriptive language in favour of language that evokes moods and emotional experiences in a fragmentary and elusive way. He expresses succinct and striking thoughts, but also offers partial or veiled thoughts and surprising leaps of association.

In this class we will read some of what has been written about Dylan, and exchange our own ideas about his work. At each meeting, we will discuss five to ten songs, listening to versions recorded by him and other performers. Each meeting will offer an opportunity to update and extend our own individual answers to the question, “What has Bob Dylan achieved as an artist?”

Expand+Lectures:

1 Backgrounds: musical and poetic precursors
(Hank Williams, Clancy Brothers, Pete Seeger/ Dylan Thomas, T.S. Eliot, etc.)

2 The Guthrie disciple / the protest singer
(Song to Woody; the Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrol; etc.)

3 T...

Hide-Lectures:

1 Backgrounds: musical and poetic precursors
(Hank Williams, Clancy Brothers, Pete Seeger/ Dylan Thomas, T.S. Eliot, etc.)

2 The Guthrie disciple / the protest singer
(Song to Woody; the Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrol; etc.)

3 The Bluesman
(Rocks and Gravel; Follow You Down; Meet Me in the Morning; etc.)

4 The Romantic poet
(Tomorrow is a Long Time; One Too Many Mornings; etc.)

5 The anti-racist / the prison witness
(Only a Pawn in Their Game; Chimes of Freedom; I Shall be Released; the Hurricane; etc.)

6 The prophet and mystic / the country and cowboy singer
(When the Ship Comes In; Mr. Tambourine Man; Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door; etc.)

7 The disillusioned and resigned lover
(Don’t Think Twice; Like a Rolling Stone; Desolation Row; etc.)

8 The writer of whimsy / the sage
(Tangled Up in Blue; Million Dollar Bash; Love Rescue Me; Roll On, John; Duquesne Whistle, etc.)

There will be optional short writing assignments to stimulate discussion