Performed Literature: Words and Music by Bob DylanBob Dylan is not a poet. He is a singer-songwriter, a performing artist. The unit of his art, as collected and documented by his intended audience, is the live performance. Right now, no existing technological tool can give researchers ready access to his entire corpus of work. Revised from the author's Ph.D. dissertation (UC Berkeley, 1978) and again from its first edition (Indiana UP, 1982), Performed Literature develops a methodology for close analysis of verbal art that is heard, not seen, using as comparative examples 24 performances of 11 songs by Bob Dylan. The second edition adds a preface, two major appendices and one minor one, and a detailed index. |
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Page 46
... final , high - pitched strum . This finality , this musical ending that could not pass for a middle or a beginning , contradicts the lyrics ' implication that , because time is not linear , endings need not be final . Any potential ...
... final , high - pitched strum . This finality , this musical ending that could not pass for a middle or a beginning , contradicts the lyrics ' implication that , because time is not linear , endings need not be final . Any potential ...
Page 153
... final line has more words than does any other in its position , and in it Dylan's phrasing sets apart both " feel " and " sorry . " The fourth verse begins with the narrator's inability to feel her and ends with his ability to feel ...
... final line has more words than does any other in its position , and in it Dylan's phrasing sets apart both " feel " and " sorry . " The fourth verse begins with the narrator's inability to feel her and ends with his ability to feel ...
Page 201
... final end he won the war [ But in the final shot he'd won the war ] After losing every battle I woke up on the roadside Daydreaming about the way things sometimes are [ Daydreaming about the way things really are ] Visions of your ...
... final end he won the war [ But in the final shot he'd won the war ] After losing every battle I woke up on the roadside Daydreaming about the way things sometimes are [ Daydreaming about the way things really are ] Visions of your ...
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Common terms and phrases
ABCB aesthetic ain't Al Kooper album artistic audience aural Babe Baby Ballad bass Beatles Blonde on Blonde Bob Dylan chord change couplet culture drums Dylan's songs Dylan's voice effect electric guitar emotional feel female Ferry's Folklore four fourth stanza Freewheelin Hard Rain hard rain's a-gonna harmonica Highway 61 Revisited Idiot Wind Idiot wind Blowing imagery imitate instrumental break Isis John Wesley Harding listener listener's melody meter Miss Lonely musical beat musicians narrator narrator's oral organ chords outtake Oxford Town performance phrase piano pitch plays poetic rain's a-gonna fall recorded refrain released Retrospective rhyme word riff rock rock music Rolling Stone sad-eyed lady scene second stanza Shelter shift singers sings someone song's sound stanza studio version Subterranean Homesick Blues suggests sung lines sweet lady syllables tambourine tape textual third stanza throughout the song tion verse woman Woody Guthrie words and music York