Reginio Bob Dylan Outside the Law

The Poetics of John Wesley Harding
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-3-032-02742-9
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 273 Seiten

Reihe: Progress in Mathematics

This book argues that the songs on Bob Dylan’s  are deeply concerned with the fractures in collective memory and politics contemporary with its composition and recording. The songs are thorough investigations of the ethics of memory in America. Critics and curators frame this song series as a “return to” Dylan’s folk roots and as a “retreat from” the political. Specifically, critics argue that Dylan, on this album, retreats from the explicitly political into the realm of timeless, universal moral concerns (as if these discourses can be so separated). The present book seeks to remedy these oversights and illuminate the reception of Dylan’s songwriting art. The summer of 1967 was understood (by white, middle-class young people) as “The Summer of Love.” For African Americans, 1967 was understood as “The Long, Hot Summer” of racial tension and rioting. Dylan’s aversion to “The Summer of Love” is well documented and is understood by critics as yet another step by Dylan away from his audience’s desires. This book examines what the album’s provocation entails; it asserts that the album is a reckoning with the tensions in American memory and history that subtend the explosive “Long, Hot Summer.” The book deploys a method informed by poststructuralism ( especially the work of Jacques Derrida) to a.) dismantle the notion of original and authentic forms and histories to which one can return and b.) explain how this ironic dismantling expresses a deeply felt ethical response to American memory and its discontents. In so doing, the book asks how art can respond to our chaotic and strife-ridden century.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Reginio, Robert

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1.  Introduction.- 2. Down in the Flood: Precursor Songs from 1967.- 3. Ballads Before the Law.- 4. Abjection.- 5. Entreaties.- 6. Outside the Law.- 7. Coda.

Über Autor(innen)

Robert Reginio  is Professor of English at Alfred University where he currently serves as the Margaret and Barbara Hagar Professor of the Humanities. He has published widely on Bob Dylan, including essays in  (Routledge, 2023) and (Bloomsbury,  2024). He has presented his work on Bob Dylan at several international conferences and symposia and serves on the editorial board of the journal .