Fall 2005 Advance Course Information

This information effective for Fall 2005. Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.

English-Language Literatures

[LTEL-170R]

170R. Bob Dylan as Poet: From Folk Hero to Electric Messiah

Instructor: Rob Wilson
E-mail: rwilson@ucsc.edu
Phone: 728-7249

Note: Provisional Outline of the Course

Course Description

While Bob Dylan's works have been discussed and taught in various approaches from those that stress his musicology to others that stress his moral religiosity or protest politics, this course will focus primarily on the poetry and poetics of Dylan's by-now-substantial canon of works—early, middle, and late. We will do so in a way or reading and interpreting that stresses not only the poetic syntax, various lyric genres, surrealist imagery, and narrative tactics used as well as the more socially expansive dynamics of how he forged his prophetic/visionary imagination.

Moving in roughly chronological order, we will examine the poetry and cultural politics of various Bob Dylan's works as well as the shifting masks and poetic personae as he moves from being a "folk hero," drawing upon tactics from the cultural-popular front (from the leftist ballads of Woody Guthrie et al. and blues genre) and Beat lyricism to refashioning himself (via building upon the visionary poetics of Blake, Brecht, Rimbaud, Whitman, Ginsberg, Dante, and especially Old and New Testament imagery) as a born-again prophet and electric Messiah. Such a Dylanesque mode of didactic poetics has to do with the poet expressing himself in the denunciatory mode of an American Jeremiah decrying Empire and the fallen promise of his homeland. This is what Greil Marcus calls Dylan's "Invisible Republic" of messianic democratic possibility linking spectral past and prophetic future.

To understand his poetry, poetics, and cultural politics, as well as this larger redemptive quest for self and nation, we will also read works in biography (Shelton), autobiography (Dylan's own Chronicles Vol. 1), cultural studies (Marcus), performance art (Williams), musical and lyrical transformation of blues and love-song genres (Gray), and poetic interpretation (Ricks). Crucial to the course and at the core of its approach will be a sustained reading of the poems/songs and tormented love lyrics in Bob Dylan's Lyrics: 1962-2001, which we will read chronologically and selectively, in the context of CDs of these song-poems and albums played in class and excerpts from the Dylan movies and TV interviews (Don't Look Back, Eat The Document, World Tour 1966, and Masked and Anonymous) that surround and amplify the poetry and its complex cultural politics and will to give poetic expression to social relevance and vision-drenched commentary.

Required Texts and Selected Readings (subject to revision)

Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Vol. One (Simon & Schuster).
Bob Dylan, Lyrics: 1962-2001 (Simon & Schuster).
Robert Shelton, No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan (Da Capo Press).
Greil Marcus, Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes (Henry Holt).
Paul Williams, Bob Dylan: Performing Artist: The Middle Years (Omnibus Press).
Michael Gray, Song and Dance Man 3: The Art of Bob Dylan (Continuum).
Christopher Ricks, Dylan's Visions of Sin (Ecco Press).

Required Assignments

Class Participation
Each student must keep up with the weekly readings and come to class prepared to ask questions about the text or to focus upon specific passages that challenge and intrigue the reader. Along these lines, I require each student to bring to the weekly class discussion sections at least one question per week relating to the assigned readings; the alternative would be to present (via reading out loud) a rough written paragraph in which you take some kind of stand or suggest possible topics or issues for class discussion. These questions and passages will provide the basis of the TA-led discussion section and may later become the basis for part of a subsequent class session, if communicated to the instructor by the TA.

Midterm
There will be a one-day midterm (consisting of some key identifications, analysis of chosen passages or poems, and brief essays). Full preparation materials for this midterm will be handed out a week in advance of the exam session.

Final Paper
The final paper will consist of a "research" essay, ranging in length at around 8-10 pages, and in the form of critical (or creative) analysis with footnotes and bibliography. The main topic will be to pick any "Bob Dylan" topic, poetic theme or technique, genre, issue, or cultural-political phenomenon and discuss some of the cultural, political, and social dynamics making this a distinctively Bob Dylan expressive phenomenon. Group projects will be allowed, and each person will receive the same grade for what is presented. To choose topics, you can use your imagination, experience, and conceptual skills; we will be open to any and all projects that touch upon some materials and themes discussed in the class and apply them to Bob Dylan's poetry and cultural politics in some inventive, informed, and interesting way. You will need to provide a one-page outline of your proposed topic and discuss it with the instructor/TA as you begin it. If you do some creative project, you will need to provide a one-page description of what you were aiming to achieve, some of the techniques used, and the authors and materials drawn upon as model or source.

Syllabus
(subject to some revision)

Weeks One and Two: Bob Dylan As Poet: Robert Zimmerman Becomes Bob Dylan

Introduction to course themes, procedures, goals, and requirements, teaching assistants, sections.

Selected readings from Chronicles, No Direction Home, and Invisible Republic; selected CD playing from early works and scenes from Don't Look Back and World Tour 1966. Selected lyrics from BD's Lyrics: 1962-2001.

Lyrics from Bob Dylan (1962), Freewheelin Bob Dylan (1963), The Times They Are a Chaging (1964).

Selections from Bob Dylan's Santa Cruz Civic Center Auditorium concert, March 16, 2000: "I am the Man, Thomas, I am the Man"; "Song to Woody."

John Baez and Bob Dylan, selected duets from NYC Carnegie Hall concert of 1964: "With God on Our Side" and "Silver Dagger."

Weeks Three and Four: Becoming a Visionary Poet
From the Woody Guthrie Complex to Howl: Revolutionary Culture, and Post-Beat Bob Dylan

Readings: Lyrics from Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964); Highway 61 Revisited (1965); Bringing It All Back Home (1961); Blonde on Blonde (1966).

Michael Gray, Song and Dance Man 3. Scenes from Les Enfants du Paradis and Don't Look Back. "One Two Many Mornings" at Newport Folk Festival, summer 1965.

Week Five: Dylan's Invisible Republic

Readings: Greil Marcus, Invisible Republic.

Lyrics from The Basement Tapes (1975), John Wesley Harding (1968), and Nashville Skyline (1969). Scenes from The Last Waltz by Martin Scorsese.

Weeks Six and Seven: Abandoned Love and The Poetic Making of Bob Dylan into Born-Again Prophet/Dylan and the Muse

Midterm preparation handout given out in class.

Readings: selected chapters from Paul Williams, Bob Dylan, Performing Artist, the Middle Years, and Christopher Ricks, Dylan's Visions of Sin.

Selected lyrics from Blood on the Tracks (1975); Desire (1976), Slow Train Coming (1979); Shot of Love (1980). Scenes from Renaldo and Clara.

Midterm examination will be given in class.

Week Eight: The Dylanesque Sublime, Visionary Imagination, from Infidels (1983) to Time Out of Mind (1997) and Love and Theft (2001).

Selections from The Bootleg Series, 1, 2, 3: the subterranean Bob Dylan within the public Bob Dylan.

Week Nine: Bob Dylan as American Jeremiah: Towards a Critique of American Empire

Readings: selected chapters Ricks and Williams; lyrics from Dylan & the Dead (1989); Knocked Out Loaded (1986); Oh Mercy (1989); World Gone Wrong (1993).

Week Ten: A Dozen Different Poets Called Bob Dylan: His Generational Influence, His Social Project, the Future of His Work in Poets and Song Writers Across America and the Globe

In-class viewing: Masked and Anonymous. Selected songs from the various folk, rock, and punk artists in "Bob Dylan: The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration" (1993).

**Final Essay will be due.

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