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 21
... Ferry thus closes with the narrator's self - confident control over language , not his drowning . The two opening lines of the song are likewise set apart by Ferry's voice and also by instrumentation . The 1973 version opens with only ...
... Ferry thus closes with the narrator's self - confident control over language , not his drowning . The two opening lines of the song are likewise set apart by Ferry's voice and also by instrumentation . The 1973 version opens with only ...
Page 115
... Ferry's organ in another guise that of a not - so - resonating piano playing a trumpet fanfare - opens the song . Alone and dignified , it plays a chord twice , then takes a brief step upward to play a higher chord twice . It descends ...
... Ferry's organ in another guise that of a not - so - resonating piano playing a trumpet fanfare - opens the song . Alone and dignified , it plays a chord twice , then takes a brief step upward to play a higher chord twice . It descends ...
Page 116
... Ferry's otherwise imperturbable voice to descend with them . His organ playing finally breaks through his voice's cool , momentarily , but it does so by highlighting " I'm not , ” an expression that is both self - centered ( like each ...
... Ferry's otherwise imperturbable voice to descend with them . His organ playing finally breaks through his voice's cool , momentarily , but it does so by highlighting " I'm not , ” an expression that is both self - centered ( like each ...
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Common terms and phrases
ABCB aesthetic ain't album artistic audience aural Babe Baby Ballad bass Beatles becomes Blonde on Blonde Bob Dylan chord change concert version couplet culture drums Dylan's songs Dylan's voice effect electric guitar emotional feel female Ferry's four fourth stanza Freewheelin Hard Rain harmonica Highway 61 Highway 61 Revisited Idiot Wind Idiot wind Blowing imagery imitate instrumental break Isis Joan Baez John Wesley Harding listener listener's melody meter Miss Lonely musical beat musicians narrative narrator narrator's oral organ chords outtake Oxford Town patterns performance phrase piano pitch plays poetic recorded refrain released rhyme word riff rock Rolling Stone Sad-Eyed Lady scene second stanza sexual 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 Univ unresolved verse vowel woman Woody Woody Guthrie words and music York