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 65
... opening " rain " recalls the " tonight " when the narrator controlled both sound and sense of the word . But as he here remembers " the first , " rain is a natural phenomenon from which he , just like all the rest , must seek shelter ...
... opening " rain " recalls the " tonight " when the narrator controlled both sound and sense of the word . But as he here remembers " the first , " rain is a natural phenomenon from which he , just like all the rest , must seek shelter ...
Page 130
... opening , is the pavement / government / medicine passage . The completed song adds " basement " to these three rhymes , thus plunging the opening scene immediately underground and justifying ( or inspiring ) the title . The last ...
... opening , is the pavement / government / medicine passage . The completed song adds " basement " to these three rhymes , thus plunging the opening scene immediately underground and justifying ( or inspiring ) the title . The last ...
Page 132
... opening stanza of " Subterranean Homesick Blues , " unlike the other three , ends with no slogan ; its closing lines ... opening four lines , with forced end rhymes , have already set out patterns of imagery that will continue through ...
... opening stanza of " Subterranean Homesick Blues , " unlike the other three , ends with no slogan ; its closing lines ... opening four lines , with forced end rhymes , have already set out patterns of imagery that will continue through ...
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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