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 43
... closing lines of the song articulate this skewed sense of time . " " Twas in another lifetime , " it begins - but Western notions do not allow for reincarnation , as cyclical conceptions of time do . The song's closing line is powerful ...
... closing lines of the song articulate this skewed sense of time . " " Twas in another lifetime , " it begins - but Western notions do not allow for reincarnation , as cyclical conceptions of time do . The song's closing line is powerful ...
Page 113
... closing can be a literal , physical action ; heart closing cannot . Furthermore , each phrase itself has two unresolved metaphorical implications . " Close his eyes for you " sug- gests a movie - star kiss , ethereal , unsullied romance ...
... closing can be a literal , physical action ; heart closing cannot . Furthermore , each phrase itself has two unresolved metaphorical implications . " Close his eyes for you " sug- gests a movie - star kiss , ethereal , unsullied romance ...
Page 153
... closing refrain , the change in personal pronoun shows the narrator's new awareness of reciprocal feelings and shared blame . In the first two refrains “ you ” were wrong , in the third “ I ” was confused , and here in the fourth " we ...
... closing refrain , the change in personal pronoun shows the narrator's new awareness of reciprocal feelings and shared blame . In the first two refrains “ you ” were wrong , in the third “ I ” was confused , and here in the fourth " we ...
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Common terms and phrases
ABCB aesthetic ain't Al Kooper album artistic audience aural Babe Baby Ballad bass Beatles becomes 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 give you shelter Hard Rain hard rain's a-gonna harmonica Highway 61 Revisited Idiot Wind Idiot wind Blowing imagery imitate inflections 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 shift sings someone song's sound stanza studio version Subterranean Homesick Blues suggests sung lines sweet lady syllables tape textual third stanza tion verse vocal woman Woody Guthrie words and music York