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21/02/2006
The green pastures of Harvard University
Dylan’s poetry has excited academics for a generation. His writing has stimulated a whole shelf of literary criticism. So it should have come as no surprise to see his work forming the subject of a new Ivy League programme.
But stumbling across details of a Harvard University Summer Seminar on Dylan’s lyrics (below) caused a rare frisson.
It’s official – Dylan’s a poet! What a tempting curriculum. Here’s hoping that seminar professor Richard Thomas publishes his intriguing course in book form before too long.
Summer Seminar—Bob Dylan: The Lyrics in Their Literary, Cultural, and Musical Contexts. Richard F. Thomas. (4 units: UN) T,Th 3:30-6 pm. Tuition $2,200. Limited enrollment.
The seminar explores the lyrics and music of Bob Dylan from their earliest manifestations in the 1960s through their current evolutions. Topics include Dylan's creation of personae (folk, protest, country, Christian, gospel); his being "far behind his rightful time," and the creative dynamism involved in innovation versus audience expectation (acoustic to electric, protest to lyrical, counter-cultural icon to Christian); the "classical" punctuations of his fertile career (Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde, "Tangled Up in Blue," Oh Mercy, Love and Theft); and the lead-ins and sequences to such classicism (Bringing It All Back Home, Desire, Time Out of Mind); performance and performative repetition and renovation; intertextuality and the creation of narrative patterns and storylines; bootlegs/outtakes as commentary on Dylan's continuing mythology; Chronicles Vol. 1 and its artistic status; Dylan in film, with special attention to Masked and Anonymous.
www.summer.harvard.edu
Gerry Smith
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