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 45
... tell of a terminated rela- tionship that can be renewed only at the disinterested female's bid- ding . How , then , does the song sound so soothing ? For one thing , the disrupted time sequence suggests that past is not unalterably past ...
... tell of a terminated rela- tionship that can be renewed only at the disinterested female's bid- ding . How , then , does the song sound so soothing ? For one thing , the disrupted time sequence suggests that past is not unalterably past ...
Page 135
... tell me Santa Claus .... The mailman comes in and even he's gotta take a side " ) . A simile tends to slow down a line and call attention to the comparison , as in " Like a Rolling Stone . " The concentration of verb- centered metaphors ...
... tell me Santa Claus .... The mailman comes in and even he's gotta take a side " ) . A simile tends to slow down a line and call attention to the comparison , as in " Like a Rolling Stone . " The concentration of verb- centered metaphors ...
Page 198
... tell [ Ring bell , hard to tell ] If anything is going to sell Try hard , get fired [ Try hard , get barred ] Get back , write braille Get jailed , jump bail Join the army if you fail Look out kid You're gonna get hit But losers ...
... tell [ Ring bell , hard to tell ] If anything is going to sell Try hard , get fired [ Try hard , get barred ] Get back , write braille Get jailed , jump bail Join the army if you fail Look out kid You're gonna get hit But losers ...
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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