Summer Seminar--Bob Dylan: The Lyrics in Their Literary, Cultural, and Musical Contexts
Not all courses are available to SSP students. For example, some courses are offered only for graduate credit. Note especially any listed prerequisites.
ENGL S-37u
Summer Seminar--Bob Dylan: The Lyrics in Their Literary, Cultural, and Musical Contexts (31806)
Richard F. Thomas
(4 units: UN) T,Th 1-3:30 pm, Boylston Hall, Room 203. Tuition $2,125. Limited enrollment.
Summer Seminars are open to Secondary School Program (SSP) students who are juniors or seniors in high school as well as to college undergraduates.
The seminar explores the lyrics and music of Bob Dylan from their earliest manifestations in the 1960s through their current evolutions. Topics include Dylan's creation of personae (folk, protest, country, Christian, gospel); his being "far behind his rightful time," and the creative dynamism involved in innovation versus audience expectation (acoustic to electric, protest to lyrical, counter-cultural icon to Christian); the "classical" punctuations of his fertile career (Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde, "Tangled Up in Blue," Oh Mercy, Love and Theft); and the lead-ins and sequences to such classicism (Bringing It All Back Home, Desire, Time Out of Mind); performance and performative repetition and renovation; intertextuality and the creation of narrative patterns and storylines; bootlegs/outtakes as commentary on Dylan's continuing mythology; Chronicles Vol. 1 and its artistic status; Dylan in film, with special attention to Masked and Anonymous.
Top of page
