Performed Literature: Words and Music by Bob Dylan

by Betsy Bowden

Overview

Bob Dylan is not a poet. He is a singer-songwriter, a performing artist. The unit of his art, as collected and documented by his intended audience, is the live performance. Right now, no existing technological tool can give researchers ready access to his entire corpus of work. Revised from the author's Ph.D. dissertation (UC Berkeley, 1978) and again from its first edition (Indiana UP, 1982), Performed Literature develops a methodology for close analysis of verbal art that is heard, not seen, using as comparative examples 24 performances of 11 songs by Bob Dylan. The second edition adds a preface, two major appendices and one minor one, and a detailed index.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780761819479
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	11/13/2001
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.62(d)

About the Author

Betsy Bowden is an Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University in New Jersey. She is the author of Listeners' Guide to Medieval English: A Discography (Garland, 1988) and Chaucer Aloud: The Varieties of Textual Interpretation (UPenn, 1987).

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Preface to the Second Edition
Chapter 2 Acknowledgments
Chapter 3 Overview
Chapter 4 Protests
Chapter 5 Developments
Chapter 6 Performances
Chapter 7 Causes
Chapter 8 Effects
Chapter 9 Improvements
Chapter 10 Aesthetics
Chapter 11 Texts and Recording Information for Performances Discussed
Chapter 12 Dylan's Albums 1961-1976
Chapter 13 Practical Suggestions for Analysis of Performance
Chapter 14 Published Reference Sources on Bob Dylan
Chapter 15 A Dylan Chronology, through 1997
Chapter 16 The Dylan Exam, F69, UW Madison
Chapter 17 Notes; Bibliography; Index

Editorial Reviews

Anyone seriously into Dylan as an artist should have this book.

On The Tracks

Anyone seriously into Dylan as an artist should have this book.--On The Tracks

From the Publisher

When Bowden realized that there was a surfeit of dissertation on Chaucer, he turned to contemporary American song writer Dylan (b. 1941). The 1987 dissertation was published in 1982. He has made few changes for the second edition aside from updating references to 1997 (there were publishing delays). His focus remains on the potential for developing performance analysis in folklore, literature, theater arts, musicology, and other fields. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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