Another three sides of Bob Dylan

The thesis ‘Another Three Sides of Bob Dylan’ is an exploration of the literary nature of the singer-songwriter, Bob Dylan. It considers three distinct phases in his 1960s albums. The first chapter covers ‘Folk Dylan’, the earliest incarnation of the artist, it explores how his immersion in folk music’s pedagogy (as defined by ethnomusicologist, Alan Lomax) nurtured Dylan’s use of intertextual homage and musical pastiche. The second chapter focuses on Dylan’s artistic shift towards electric music during the mid-1960s. It compares the change in Dylan’s style to avant-garde experimentations by poets and prose writers in the early 20th century – to highlight ‘Modernist Dylan’. The final chapter focuses on Dylan’s return to more traditional music during the late-1960s. It explores his use of the Bible as a tool for creating story - narratives that reflect a change in the artist’s life. Importantly the thesis will also extrapolate ‘three sides’ of Bob Dylan’s art - his lyrics, his music, and his voice. It will assert that any investigation into Dylan’s literary quality does a disservice to his chosen medium of song, by not considering all three of these emotive writing tools.