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 10
... Oxford Town " uses the specific incident , the " topic " as reported in northern newspapers , as a starting point to create a song with which a responsive listener can interact . The narrator of “ Oxford Town , " confronted by violence ...
... Oxford Town " uses the specific incident , the " topic " as reported in northern newspapers , as a starting point to create a song with which a responsive listener can interact . The narrator of “ Oxford Town , " confronted by violence ...
Page 11
... Oxford town , ” evoking scenes and images that make it a place to avoid . The imagery begins with the sun and ends with the moon , illuminating the two dead men . The opening scene anticipates the closing one , for the first - stanza ...
... Oxford town , ” evoking scenes and images that make it a place to avoid . The imagery begins with the sun and ends with the moon , illuminating the two dead men . The opening scene anticipates the closing one , for the first - stanza ...
Page 12
... Oxford town in the musical style of those whom he came there to ( as it were ) denigrate . A responsive listener to Dylan's song thus experiences unresolved oppositions in at least four ways that do not show in the printed text . There ...
... Oxford town in the musical style of those whom he came there to ( as it were ) denigrate . A responsive listener to Dylan's song thus experiences unresolved oppositions in at least four ways that do not show in the printed text . There ...
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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