Bob Dylan
the politics of influence
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.v8i2.222Keywords:
Jacques Derrida, Bob Dylan, T. S. Eliot, folk music, Michel Foucault, Woody Guthrie, influence, Eric Lott, Dave Van Ronk, theft, identityAbstract
To talk of the influences on or the influence of Bob Dylan is to talk of what is manifestly significant. However, the notion of influence is controversial. Dylan himself appreciates its complexities. He has admitted his influences and praised past figures, and yet he has fashioned an identity of the ever-changing individualist who resists labelling. In this article, theorists of influence are reviewed so as to appraise how influence might be taken. Subsequently Dylan’s unacknowledged use of others’ material and the impact of musical traditions and popular movements on his work are reviewed. Influence is seen to be a key to opening up the complex identities within Dylan’s work.
References
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Van Ronk, D. 2005. The Mayor of MacDougal Street. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.
Bloom, H. 1999. The Anxiety of Influence. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
—2011. The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Boucher, D., and G. Browning. 2009. The Political Art of Bob Dylan. Exeter: Imprint Academic.
Brake, E. 2009. ‘“You Can Always Come Back, But You Can’t Come Back All The Way”: Freedom and the Past in Dylan’s Recent Work’. In The Political Art of Bob Dylan, ed. D. Boucher and G. Browning, 184–207. Exeter: Imprint Academic.
Browning, G. 2009. ‘Bob Dylan: (Post)Modern Times’. In The Political Art of Bob Dylan, ed. D. Boucher and G. Browning, 157–84. Exeter, Imprint Academic.
Derrida, J. 1976 On Grammatology. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press.
—1978. Writing and Difference. London: Routledge.
Dylan, B. 2004. Chronicles: Volume 1. New York and London: Simon & Shuster.
—2006. The Essential Interviews, ed. Jonathan Cott. New York: Wenner Media, LLC.
Eliot, T. S. 1951. Selected Essays. London: Faber and Faber.
Foucault, M. 1976. The History of Sexuality: Volume 1–The Will to Knowledge. London: Allen Lane.
—1984. ‘What is an Author?’ In The Foucault Reader, ed. P. Rabinow, 101–20. London: Random House.
Gilmore, M. 2012. ‘Bob Dylan: The Rolling Stone Interview’. Rolling Stone, 27 September: 42–51.
Heylin, C. 1991. Bib Dylan behind the Shades: A Biography. London: Viking.
Longenbach, J. 1994. ‘“Mature Poets Steal”: Eliot’s Allusive Practice’. In The Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot, ed. A. D. Moody, 176–88. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521420806.013
Lott, E. 1995. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
—2009. ‘“Love and Theft”’. In The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan, ed. K. J. H. Dettmar, 167–74. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521886949.018
MacGregor, C. 1972. Bob Dylan: The Early Years: A Retrospective. New York: Da Capo.
Moody. A. D. 1951. The Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ricks, C. 2003. Dylan’s Visions of Sin. London: Viking.
Rotolo, S. 2009 A Freewheelin’ Time. London: Aurum Press.
Saga, Y. 1991. Confessions of a Yakuza. Kodanshka: Kodanshka International.
Scobie, S. 1991. Alias Bob Dylan. Calgary: Red Deer Press.
Shelton. R. 1986. No Direction Home: The life and Music of Bob Dylan. Bury St. Edmunds: New English Library.
Van Ronk, D. 2005. The Mayor of MacDougal Street. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.
Published
2014-05-20
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Browning, G. (2014). Bob Dylan: the politics of influence. Popular Music History, 8(2), 222-239. https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.v8i2.222
