Bob Dylan: Poet of disruption, dissonance and an aesthetic of dissent

Title

Bob Dylan: Poet of disruption, dissonance and an aesthetic of dissent

Creator

Mathews S.

Description

This paper is a brief study of the pivotal figure of folk rock, Bob Dylan. Acclaimed as a songwriter and singer, he was also the poetic voice of the counter culture of the nineteen sixties in America. The counter culture sought to unseat the mainstream establishment that seemed obsessed with war, conservative ideals and religious nationalism. Dylan burst onto this scene 'already a legend' and 'the unwashed phenomenon' (Baez, 1975) projecting the image of the original vagabond and troubadour. A glance at a selection of some of his best known lyrics disabuses one of the notions of his being uninitiated into the discourse of philosophy and literature. He draws freely on and engages with ideas from texts that are sometimes even obscure. The Nobel he was awarded in October 2016 recognized his art for evolving new modes of poetic expression. This paper studies Dylan, the performer and the writer who has masterfully disrupted most accepted literary modes using the dissonance-rich space of Rock music while retaining some of the traditional forms of poetic utterance. AesthetixMS 2016.

Source

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, Vol-9, No. 1, pp. 21-28.

Date

2017-01-01

Publisher

Tarun Tapas Mukherjee

Subject

Aesthetic of dissent; Bob Dylan; Disruption; Dissonance; Folk song; Protest; Rock and roll

Coverage

Mathews S., Christ University, Bangalore, India

Rights

All Open Access; Gold Open Access

Relation

ISSN: 9752935

Format

Online

Language

English

Type

Article

Identifier

https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v9n1.s03

https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85020860226&doi=10.21659%2frupkatha.v9n1.s03&partnerID=40&md5=016bbfcd804628cea64f17e2f67349d2