Drawing from a variety of multimedia and archival materials, my dissertation involves a three-figure examination of Bob Dylan, T.S. Eliot, and Don DeLillo. These three figures are linked, (as some other critics have noted) through scattered intertextual allusions. But I argue that a more telling correlation exists in the manner in which all three managed to rise to the apex of their respective fields. I examine this phenomenon and in so doing, my project seeks out a composite theoretical model, better suited to explain the multiform artistry of Dylan and to account for the related transformative cultural navigation of Eliot and DeLillo at key points their careers. My dissertation sheds light on these authors drawing on Bourdieu’s model of “the field of cultural production” and Bolter and Grusin’s concept of “remediation:” how print, photography film, and other media appropriate, influence, and reconstitute each other. I reconfigure their concept to focus on individual agency and situate these three as consummate remediators of their own and each other’s work, their individual legacies, and ultimately the very “field of cultural production” itself. This reading recasts our understanding of each author: I position Dylan as a major contemporary literary figure; Eliot as a consummate public performer and recording artist; and DeLillo as a visionary cultural remixer. This analysis provides fresh perspectives on the idea of authorship, canonicity and textuality, as it suggests that a vigorous literary analysis requires us to move beyond a specific medium associated with an author toward a dynamic field of multimodal intertextuality. Literary research and pedagogy in the media-saturated 21st century classroom demand a canon unbound. Such a canon, I argue, should include figures like Dylan, as it should also provoke a fuller, more vital engagement with “the literary tradition” within which we place figures like Eliot and DeLillo. My work, situated at the crossroads between American literature, cultural studies, and the emerging field of the digital humanities, thus produces a more nuanced understanding of the authors in question, the canonical heritage to which they contribute, and the scholarly methods by which we appraise and teach their works. / text

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This project seeks to unpack and moderate the postmodern debate surrounding James Joyce's 1922 novel, Ulysses, by examining how the text responds to global-local dichotomies, be they geographical or conceptual, and considering its stylistics in light of these themes. In doing so, it casts the likes of Laurence Sterne, Walt Whitman, Joseph Conrad, Gertrude Stein, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Bob Dylan and Kurt Vonnegut, among others, alongside Joyce, connecting similar themes and stylistic responses. Ultimately, it suggests that the avant-garde response on the part of Joyce and these others is not necessarily a manifesto bolstering the style, but a reminder to the interpreter to not take the ability of traditional narrative to subsume the surprisingly complex local moment of experience as given. Instead of being "anti-art," as these avant-garde stylistics are often accused of, these aesthetics place new value on the old aesthetic and the act of interpretation, asking the interpreter to perennially re-evaluate the old and given amid the continuously new and complex local moment of experience resulting from the convergence of contrast brought on by the dynamically mapped globe in the process of globalization.

[pt] A tese apresenta o modelo poligonal, um paradigma autoral criado para a análise de canções populares centrado no peso de quatro parâmetros: melodia, contabilidade, forma e sentido. Traduções de canções podem ser avaliadas usando os mesmos quesitos, o que permite uma visualização rápida dos erros e acertos do tradutor. O modelo é colocado à prova com a análise e tradução autoral (e comentada) de três canções: Highway 61 Revisited e All Along the Watchtower, de Bob Dylan, e Idioteque, do Radiohead. Uma semelhança influenciou a escolha desses dois artistas: eles têm fases musicais muito bem definidas: Dylan começou a carreira como músico folk tocando instrumentos acústicos e acabou adotando instrumentos elétricos; já o Radiohead tinha um som rock n roll e lançou álbuns com uma influência mais eletrônica. Então, para pensar na questão da performance e nas influências artísticas de cada canção, as três traduções foram gravadas. / [en] This dissertation introduces the polygonal model, a paradigm for the analysis of translation of popular music centered around four parameters: melody, singability, form, and sense. Translations of songs can be evaluated with the same criteria, which allows for a quick way to visualize the translator s mistakes and successes. The model is tested with the analyses of commented translations of three songs: Highway 61 Revisited and All Along the Watchtower, written by Bob Dylan, and Idioteque, written by Radiohead. A similarity influenced why those two artists were chosen: Dylan started out as a folk musician playing acoustic instruments and then went electric; Radiohead had a rock n roll sound, but then released albums with a heavy electronic influence. In order to think about performance and the artistic influences from each song, the three translations were recorded.

Uppsatsen belyser delar av komplexiteten i Bob Dylans författarskap via en analys av det medvetna bruket av intertextualitet i sex låtar från tre olika album, alla från mitten av 1960-talet. Det klarläggs att Dylan inte kan förenklas till endast alluderingar till Shakespeare, utan att författarskapet innehåller en hög grad av komplexitet. Syftet är alltså att visa på låtskrivarens medvetna influenser, alluderingar, citat, omskrivningar och satir och hur det påvisar tesen. Analysexemplen, som de framstår via det litteraturvetenskapliga verktyget, påvisar olika kopplingar. Även om författaren är komplex från första texten utvecklas poeten från att referera till folktraditionen till att alludera till författare som Edgar Allen Poe, William Blake, Dylan Thomas och Allen Ginsberg i de senare exemplen. / This essay highlights parts of the complexity in Bob Dylan’s authorship via an analysis of the conscious usage of intertextuality in six songs from three different albums, all from the middle of the 1960’s. It is elucidated that Dylan’s lyrics cannot be simplified as only allusions to Shakespeare and it is shown that the lyrics contains a high level of complexity. The purpose is to display the author’s conscious use of references such as allusions, quotes, euphemisms and satire and show how those supports my thesis. The texts, as they are perceived through intertextuality, shows different connections. Even though the author is complex from the first example to the last, it is shown in this essay that he progresses from referring to the old folk music tradition to alluding to authors such as Edgar Allen Poe, William Blake, Dylan Thomas and Allen Ginsberg in the later examples.

Excerpt: In 1975, Bob Dylan invited Sam Shepard, the young playwright who had ignited the Off-Broadway and London theatre scene, to go on tour with him in order to write scenes and dialogue for a film of the Rolling Thunder Revue.

With its appeal predicated upon what civilized society rejects, there has always been something hidden in plain sight when it comes to the outlaw figure as cultural myth. Damian A. Carpenter traverses the unsettled outlaw territory that is simultaneously a part of and apart from settled American society by examining outlaw myth, performance, and perception over time. Since the late nineteenth century, the outlaw voice has been most prominent in folk performance, the result being a cultural persona invested in an outlaw tradition that conflates the historic, folkloric, and social in a cultural act. Focusing on the works and guises of Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, and Bob Dylan, Carpenter goes beyond the outlaw figure’s heroic associations and expands on its historical (Jesse James, Billy the Kid), folk (John Henry, Stagolee), and social (tramps, hoboes) forms. He argues that all three performers represent a culturally disruptive force, whether it be the bad outlaw Lead Belly represented to an urban bourgeoisie audience, the good outlaw Guthrie shaped to reflect the social concerns of marginalized people, or the honest outlaw Dylan offered audiences who responded to him as a promoter of clear-sighted self-evaluation. As Carpenter shows, the outlaw and the law as located in society are interdependent in terms of definition. His study provides an in-depth look at the outlaw figure’s self-reflexive commentary and critique of both the performer and society that reflects the times in which they played their outlaw roles. / https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu_books/1158/thumbnail.jpg

Katherine Weiss’s chapter addresses the ways both Dylan and Sam Shepard work to destabilize American myths while insisting upon the very necessity of such myths—in the form of masks, or always mutating performances. By focusing specifically on Shepard’s relationship with and effort to understand him, Weiss reveals the significance of Dylan’s protean nature (as it relates to America’s tendency to get trapped in, or to reify, its necessary myths). At the same time, she shows how Dylan and Shepard collaborated to break down outmoded myths by resurrecting, necessarily, new, albeit more temporary, unstable, performative ones—especially in their interrogation of the concept of American identity. Weiss draws particular attention to Shepard and Dylan’s collaboration on the song “Brownsville Girl” (1986).

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The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan was released in 1963, during the Cold War. Nuclear apocalypse was a big fear at the time and the fright deeply influenced the album. Therefore, this essay argues that the record contains a poetic narrative, with the overarching theme of contemporary apocalyptic death. The poetic narrative reveals an allusion to Noah’s Ark and the story of Judas, which is not present if the songs are analyzed independently. The narrative consists of five parts: “Blowin’ in the Wind” deals with the uncertainty of the 1960s; “Masters of War” describes the arming of the younger generation to fight a nuclear war; the actual apocalyptic event is chronicled in “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”; “Talkin’ World War III Blues” narrates the post-apocalyptic event and the final part is “Corrina, Corrina”, which deals with the reproductive consequences. The material will be analyzed, and the conclusion supported, by recourse to historical contextualization and religious symbolism and allusions. The essay uses Beebee’s analysis of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” (1991) and Roos’ work on the entire Dylan canon from a thematic perspective (1982) to support the conclusions made, but compared to previous papers on The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, this essay takes the original mode of music consumption into account and studies the album as a greater whole. Through an analysis of the entire record, allusions are encoded that is not evident if each song is interpreted independently.