writing an argumentative essay about the nobel prize in literature bob dylan

Home — Essay Samples — Entertainment — Bob Dylan — Bob Dylan Nobel Prize: Redefining Literary Excellence in Music

Bob Dylan Nobel Prize: Redefining Literary Excellence in Music

• Categories: Bob Dylan

About this sample

Words: 1951 |

10 min read

Updated: 3 November, 2023

Words: 1951 | Pages: 4 | 10 min read

In the world of literature, the Nobel Prize is an esteemed accolade traditionally reserved for writers and poets who have made profound contributions to the realm of letters. However, the decision to award Bob Dylan the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016 marked a departure from convention. Dylan, renowned as a folk singer and songwriter, received this prestigious honor "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition." This unconventional selection sparked widespread discussion and debate, challenging the established norms of literary recognition. Critics argue that Bob Dylan's recognition as a Nobel laureate in Literature diverges from tradition, contending that the prize should be reserved for writers who have made groundbreaking contributions to the written word. However, Dylan's win signals a paradigm shift, breaking the mold of previous laureates. His unique status as a singer and songwriter expands the definition of literature, acknowledging that words set to music can be equally powerful and profound.

Table of contents

Controversies surrounding dylan's nobel win, bob dylan’s “oxford town” and social injustice, works cited, video version.

Come senators, congressmen Please heed the call Don’t stand in the doorway Don’t block up the hall For he that gets hurt Will be he who has stalled There’s a battle outside And it is ragin'. It'll soon shake your windows And rattle your walls For the times they are a-changin'.

You may also be interested Essay Title Generator

• Dylan, B. (1964). The Times They Are A-Changin'. On The Times They Are A-Changin' [MP3]. Columbia Records.
• North, A. (2016, October 13). Why Bob Dylan shouldn’t have gotten a Nobel. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/opinion/why-bob-dylan-shouldnt-have-gotten-a-nobel.html
• Sheffield, R. (2016, October 14). Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize isn’t About Literature. Rolling Stone. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/bob-dylans-nobel-prize-isnt-about-literature-196482/
• The Nobel Prize. (n.d.). NobelPrize.org. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/
• Traynor, C. (2017). Songs of social protest. In A. Hager (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to Bob Dylan (pp. 43-57). Cambridge University Press.
• Trout, S. (2007). Bob Dylan and postmodernism. In C. Ricks & J. Szeman (Eds.), The Cambridge companion to modernism (pp. 216-229). Cambridge University Press.
• Williams, P. (2009). Performing the song: The singer-songwriter and the performance of authenticity in postwar America. In T. Pinch & K. Bijsterveld (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of sound studies (pp. 410-423). Oxford University Press.
• Womack, K. (2014). Bob Dylan’s performance style. In J. Covach & G. Boone (Eds.), Understanding rock: Essays in musical analysis (pp. 181-193). Oxford University Press.
• Womack, K. (2015). The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan: Introduction. In K. Womack (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to Bob Dylan (pp. 1-17). Cambridge University Press.
• Womack, K. (2017). The Nobel prize and Bob Dylan. In A. Hager (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to Bob Dylan (pp. 270-276). Cambridge University Press.

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Dr. Karlyna PhD

Verified writer

• Expert in: Entertainment

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

2 pages / 1054 words

1 pages / 478 words

1 pages / 581 words

4 pages / 1617 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Bob Dylan

Born in America, Bob Dylan has been a prominent songwriter, singer, author, and visual artist, taking the frontline in popular culture for more than fifty years. The majority of his regarded works date back to the 1960s, where [...]

Bob Dylan, a well-known, well-deserved singer-songwriter that most people know for their entire lifetime, is a global influencer that I am most admired. He was born with the name Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, in [...]

Bob Dylan is one of the world's most iconic American folk singer song writers. He was born in Duluth, Minnesota in May of 1941. He spent the first six years of his life giving no indication of the musical talent that would later [...]

In a time in American history when inequality was the leader of our country and murder and violence were an everyday occurrence, Emmett Till was a fourteen year-old boy who was visiting Mississippi when he allegedly flirted [...]

Taylor Swift has been on top of the music charts since she started her career. Her most recent album, 1989, has broken many records and has given the public numerous songs that will be stuck in the heads of Americans forever. [...]

Music is a powerful tool for the expression of ideologies, especially when it comes from respected and popular artists. During the 1960s, considerably the most widely known were the Beatles, with their sales at over 500 million [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

• Entertainment

The Nobel Prize and Bob Dylan: Argumentative Essay Example

Musicians and writers have a lot in common. But does that mean musicians like Bob Dylan deserve the Nobel Prize in Literature? A debate sparked back in 2016 when Bob Dylan got the award. People say he deserves it, while critics on the other hand disagree. I'll be explaining why I think Bob Dylan rightfully deserves the award. 

Musicians can inspire others, people even say it's like poetry. Schools have devoted themselves to analyzing his work "Literary scholars have long debated whether Mr. Dylan’s lyrics can stand on their own as poetry, and an astonishing volume of academic work has been devoted to parsing his music. The Oxford Book of American Poetry included his song “Desolation Row” in its 2006 edition, and Cambridge University Press released The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan in 2009, further cementing his reputation as a brilliant literary stylist." Article 4

Not only is Dylan's music inspiring, but it also covers heavy topics, making it have the same weight as any other piece of a writer. These topics can include love to politics ' “Dylan has recorded a large number of albums revolving around topics like the social conditions of man, religion, politics, and love. The lyrics have continuously been published in new editions, under the title Lyrics' Article 2.

Other people might say since Dylan is a musician, they argue his art isn't as high class as actual poems and writing. Now, I may agree if it wasn't for the fact that the standard for what's 'low and high class' art has changed over the years. The award just proves that musicians can be high-class artists “It’s literature, but it’s music, it’s performance, it’s art, it’s also highly commercial,” said David Hajdu, a music critic for The Nation who has written extensively about Mr. Dylan and his contemporaries. “The old categories of high and low art, they’ve been collapsing for a long time, but this is it being made official.” article 4

Musicians and writers can create inspiring pieces of work with just their words. Dylan getting the prize has started many arguments. Musicians deserve to be taken as seriously as writers.

Related Samples

• Greek Mythology in Wonder Woman Essay Example
• Compare and Contrast Essay Example: Contagion Movie vs. COVID-19
• Hawaii by Maluma Song Analysis Essay
• Personal Narrative Essay: My Relationship with Theatre
• Self-Improvement In Pop Culture: Creating a Character of Oneself
• Irony in The Yellow Wallpaper Essay Example
• The Destructive Impact Social Media Has On Today's Youth Essay Example
• The Effects of Social Media on Teenagers Essay Example
• Essay Sample on Spider-Man 2: The Sociology Behind The Mask
• The History of American Radio and Television Essay Example

Didn't find the perfect sample?

You can order a custom paper by our expert writers

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Bob Dylan Wins Nobel Prize, Redefining Boundaries of Literature

Bob dylan and his poetic gift, a look at bob dylan's contribution to the world of literature that brought him a nobel prize..

By Ben Sisario ,  Alexandra Alter and Sewell Chan

• Oct. 13, 2016

Half a century ago, Bob Dylan shocked the music world by plugging in an electric guitar and alienating folk purists. For decades he continued to confound expectations, selling millions of records with dense, enigmatic songwriting.

Now, Mr. Dylan, the poet laureate of the rock era, has been rewarded with the Nobel Prize in Literature, an honor that elevates him into the company of T. S. Eliot, Gabriel García Márquez, Toni Morrison and Samuel Beckett.

Mr. Dylan, 75, is the first musician to win the award, and his selection on Thursday is perhaps the most radical choice in a history stretching back to 1901. In choosing a popular musician for the literary world’s highest honor, the Swedish Academy, which awards the prize, dramatically redefined the boundaries of literature, setting off a debate about whether song lyrics have the same artistic value as poetry or novels.

[ Our pop critic on Bob Dylan, the musician | Our book critic on Dylan, the writer ]

Some prominent writers celebrated Mr. Dylan’s literary achievements, including Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates and Salman Rushdie, who called Mr. Dylan “the brilliant inheritor of the bardic tradition,” adding, “Great choice.”

But others called the academy’s decision misguided and questioned whether songwriting, however brilliant, rises to the level of literature.

“Bob Dylan winning a Nobel in Literature is like Mrs Fields being awarded 3 Michelin stars,” the novelist Rabih Alameddine wrote on Twitter . “This is almost as silly as Winston Churchill.”

Listen to Bob Dylan’s Many Influences

As Bob Dylan has said, his songs “didn’t get here by themselves.” Here’s a sampler of his influences, from Woody Guthrie to the Kinks, alongside the tracks he made famous.

Jodi Picoult, a best-selling novelist, snarkily asked, “I’m happy for Bob Dylan, #ButDoesThisMeanICanWinAGrammy?”

Many musicians praised the choice with a kind of awe. On Twitter, Rosanne Cash, the songwriter and daughter of Johnny Cash, wrote simply : “Holy mother of god. Bob Dylan wins the Nobel Prize.”

But some commentators bristled. Two youth-oriented websites, Pitchfork and Vice , both ran columns questioning whether Mr. Dylan was an appropriate choice for the Nobel.

As the writer of classic folk and protest songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” as well as Top 10 hits including “Like a Rolling Stone,” Mr. Dylan is an unusual Nobel winner. The first American to win the prize since Ms. Morrison in 1993, he is studied by Oxford dons and beloved by presidents.

Yet instead of appearing at the standard staid news conference arranged by a publisher, Mr. Dylan was in Las Vegas on Thursday for a performance at a theater there. By late afternoon, Mr. Dylan had not commented on the honor.

Mr. Dylan has often sprinkled literary allusions into his music and cited the influence of poetry on his lyrics, and has referenced Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine and Ezra Pound. He has also published poetry and prose, including his 1971 collection, “Tarantula,” and “Chronicles: Volume One,” a memoir published in 2004. His collected lyrics from 1961-2012 are due out on Nov. 1 from Simon & Schuster.

Literary scholars have long debated whether Mr. Dylan’s lyrics can stand on their own as poetry, and an astonishing volume of academic work has been devoted to parsing his music. The Oxford Book of American Poetry included his song “Desolation Row,” in its 2006 edition, and Cambridge University Press released “The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan” in 2009, further cementing his reputation as a brilliant literary stylist.

Billy Collins, the former United States poet laureate, argued that Mr. Dylan deserved to be recognized not merely as a songwriter, but as a poet.

“Most song lyrics don’t really hold up without the music, and they aren’t supposed to,” Mr. Collins said in an interview. “Bob Dylan is in the 2 percent club of songwriters whose lyrics are interesting on the page even without the harmonica and the guitar and his very distinctive voice. I think he does qualify as poetry.”

In giving the literature prize to Mr. Dylan, the academy may also be recognizing that the gap has closed between high art and more commercial creative forms.

“It’s literature, but it’s music, it’s performance, it’s art, it’s also highly commercial,” said David Hajdu , a music critic for The Nation who has written extensively about Mr. Dylan and his contemporaries. “The old categories of high and low art, they’ve been collapsing for a long time, but this is it being made official.”

In previous years, writers and publishers have grumbled that the prize often goes to obscure writers with clear political messages over more popular figures. But in choosing someone so well known, and so far outside of established literary traditions, the academy seems to have swung far into the other direction, bestowing prestige on a popular artist who already had plenty of it.

It’s not the first time it has stretched the definition of literature. In 1953, Winston Churchill received the prize, in part as recognition of the literary qualities of his soaring political speeches and “brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values,” according to the academy. And many were surprised last year, when the prize went to the Belarussian journalist Svetlana Alexievich , whose deeply reported narratives draw on oral history.

In its citation, the Swedish Academy credited Mr. Dylan with “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”

Sara Danius, a literary scholar and the permanent secretary of the 18-member academy, which called Mr. Dylan “a great poet in the English-speaking tradition” and compared him to Homer and Sappho, whose work was delivered orally. Asked if the decision to award the prize to a musician signaled a broadening in the definition of literature, Ms. Danius responded, “The times they are a-changing, perhaps.”

Mr. Dylan, whose original name is Robert Allen Zimmerman, was born on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minn. He emerged on the New York music scene in 1961 as an artist in the tradition of Woody Guthrie, singing protest songs and strumming an acoustic guitar in clubs and cafes in Greenwich Village.

But from the start, Mr. Dylan stood out for dazzling lyrics and an oblique songwriting style that made him a source of fascination for artists and critics. In 1963, the folk group Peter, Paul and Mary reached No. 2 on the Billboard pop chart with a version of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” whose ambiguous refrains evoked Ecclesiastes.

Within a few years, Mr. Dylan was confounding the very notion of folk music, with ever more complex songs and moves toward a more rock ’n’ roll sound. In 1965, he played with an electric rock band at the Newport Folk Festival, provoking a backlash from fans who accused him of selling out.

After reports of a motorcycle accident in 1966 near his home in Woodstock, N.Y., Mr. Dylan withdrew further from public life but remained intensely fertile as a songwriter. His voluminous archives , showing his working process through thousands of pages of songwriting drafts, were acquired this year by institutions in Tulsa, Okla.

His 1975 album “Blood on the Tracks” was interpreted as a supremely powerful account of the breakdown of a relationship, but just four years later the Christian themes of “Slow Train Coming” divided critics. His most recent two albums were chestnuts of traditional pop that had been associated with Frank Sinatra.

Since 1988, Mr. Dylan has toured almost constantly, inspiring an unofficial name for his itinerary, the Never Ending Tour. Last weekend, he played the first of two performances at Desert Trip, a festival in Indio, Calif., that also featured the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney and other stars of the 1960s. He is scheduled to return on Friday for the festival’s second weekend.

“As the ’60s wore on,” Giles Harvey wrote in The New York Review of Books in 2010, “Dylan grew increasingly frustrated with what he came to regard as the pious sloganeering and doctrinaire leftist politics of the folk milieu.” He “began writing a kind of visionary nonsense verse, in which the rough, ribald, lawless America of the country’s traditional folk music collided with a surreal ensemble of characters from history, literature, legend, the Bible, and many other places besides.”

Mr. Dylan’s many albums, which the Swedish Academy described as having “a tremendous impact on popular music,” include “Bringing It All Back Home” and “Highway 61 Revisited” (1965), “Blonde on Blonde” (1966), “Blood on the Tracks” (1975), “Oh Mercy” (1989), “Time Out Of Mind” (1997), “‘Love and Theft’” (2001) and “Modern Times” (2006). His 38 studio albums have sold 125 million copies around the world.

The academy added: “Dylan has the status of an icon. His influence on contemporary music is profound, and he is the object of a steady stream of secondary literature.”

Nobel Prize Winning Scientists Reflect on Nearly Sleeping Through the Life-Changing Call

How eight winners got the word.

Mr. Dylan’s many honors include Grammy, Academy and Golden Globe awards. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, won a special Pulitzer Prize in 2008 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.

The Nobel comes with a prize of 8 million Swedish kronor, or just over $900,000. The literature prize is given for a lifetime of writing rather than for a single work.

“Today, everybody from Bruce Springsteen to U2 owes Bob a debt of gratitude,” President Obama said at the medal ceremony. “There is not a bigger giant in the history of American music. All these years later, he’s still chasing that sound, still searching for a little bit of truth. And I have to say that I am a really big fan.”

Other 2016 winners

■ Yoshinori Ohsumi, a Japanese cell biologist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Oct. 3 for his discoveries on how cells recycle their content, a process known as autophagy, a Greek term for “self-eating.”

■ David J. Thouless, F. Duncan M. Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz shared the Nobel Prize in Physics on Oct. 4 for their research into the bizarre properties of matter in extreme states.

■ Jean-Pierre Sauvage, J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Oct. 5 for development of molecular machines, the world’s smallest mechanical devices.

■ President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for pursuing a deal to end 52 years of conflict with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the longest-running war in the Americas.

■ Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmstrom were awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science on Monday for their work on improving the design of contracts, the deals that bind together employers and their workers, or companies and their customers.

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the author of a 2013 Op-Ed essay arguing that Bob Dylan should receive a Nobel Prize. The author, Bill Wyman, is a journalist, not a former Rolling Stones bassist who has the same name.

How we handle corrections

Follow Ben Sisario @sisario , Alexandra Alter @xanalter and Sewell Chan @sewellchan on Twitter.

Find the Right Soundtrack for You

Trying to expand your musical horizons take a listen to something new..

Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” is a vivid mission statement. Let’s discuss !

Peter Brown , one of the Beatles’ closest confidants, tells all (again).

Alice Coltrane’s explosive Carnegie concert and 7 more new songs on the Playlist .

Pedal Steel Noah ’s covers charm fans online. Up next? His own songs.

5 minutes that will make you love Shirley Horn .

• Corrections

How Did Bob Dylan Win the Nobel Prize in Literature?

Bob Dylan is one of the greatest singer-songwriters of all time – but is he a worthy winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature?

Not only are Bob Dylan’s songs loved by millions around the world, but his skills as a songwriter within the great American song tradition have also long been recognized. When this recognition culminated in his being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016, however, some were left wondering whether praise for Dylan as a wordsmith had gone a step too far. Here, we will take a look at Dylan’s background and discography before weighing up both sides of the argument over whether he deserved to be made a Nobel laureate or whether he was unfairly privileged over other writers.

Who is Bob Dylan?

Though internationally famous as Bob Dylan , Robert Allan Zimmerman was born on May 24th, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota, before moving to Hibbing, Minnesota when he was six and where he spent the rest of his childhood. He adopted the stage name Dylan after the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who performed legendary poetry readings in the US and significantly influenced such American countercultural movements as the Beat Generation. And, in turn, the influence of Allan Ginsburg (the Beat Generation’s most notable poet) can be detected in the free-association lyrics of “Subterranean Homesick Blues” from Dylan’s 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home .

While a student at Hibbing High School, Dylan performed in various school bands, performing covers of rock and roll songs by the likes of Elvis Presley and Little Richard. In 1959, however, he enrolled at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, where he first encountered American folk music. Here, he soon began performing on the folk music circuit under the name Bob Dylan.

His time in Minneapolis was brief; however, dropping out of university at the end of his first year in 1960. He moved to New York, where his career took off. In 1962, he released his debut album, Bob Dylan , which, though he would later be famed for his songwriting, contained only two original compositions.

Get the latest articles delivered to your inbox

Please check your inbox to activate your subscription.

His next album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963), in contrast, featured political protest songs penned by Dylan himself, including “Oxford Town” and “Blowin’ in the Wind,” while the song “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” seemed eerily to predict the Cuban Missile Crisis .

The political element to Dylan’s songwriting and public persona was also reflected in his third album, The Times They Are a-Changin’ (1964), and in his involvement in the US Civil Rights Movement . (In 1971, he would release the song “George Jackson” in tribute to the assassinated Black Panther leader).

As his adoption of a stage name might suggest, Dylan not only has a genius for self-invention but a knack for continually reinventing himself throughout his career. His next album, Another Side of Bob Dylan , was a lighter, more impressionistic offering, marking a break from his earlier work. Since then (Dylan continues to make music to this day), he has continually adapted his music, ranging widely among styles and genres and sampling electric, blues, country, rock, and American folk.

Outrage among the Literati

When it was announced on October 13th, 2016 that Bob Dylan would be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature that year, many were outraged by the Swedish Academy’s decision to privilege a singer-songwriter and musician over a more conventional literary writer. Unsurprisingly perhaps, some of this outrage was expressed by writers, who took to Twitter to vent their displeasure.

The novelist Rabih Alameddine, for example, compared Dylan being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature to “Mrs. Fields being awarded three Michelin stars” and said that it was “almost as silly as Winston Churchill ” being awarded the coveted and prestigious prize in 1953 for his biographical and historical writings, as well as his oratory. Popular novelist Jodie Picoult stated that she was “happy for Dylan,” though she followed up this remark with the rather sarcastic question, “#ButDoesThisMeanICanWinAGrammy?”

In a similar vein, Jason Pinter drolly asked whether Dylan’s Nobel Prize meant that Stephen King “could get elected to the Rock N’ Roll hall of fame.” Despite being a self-confessed fan of Dylan’s work, Irvine Welsh did not mince his words, dismissing Dylan’s Nobel as “an ill-conceived nostalgia award wrenched from the rancid prostates of senile, gibbering hippies.”

And Hari Kunzru declared it “the lamest Nobel win since they gave it to Obama for not being Bush,” arguing that while the Nobel Prize could have been awarded “to [Javier] Marias or Ngugi [ sic ] [wa Thiong’o] or Yan Lianke or [Dag] Solstad or [Dubravka] Ugresic [ sic ]” and so introduced their work to a wider readership, it had instead been given to someone who’s work with which we were all already familiar. Kunzru’s line of argument, however, raises the question: is the purpose of the Nobel Prize in Literature primarily to reward writerly excellence, or is it to raise the profiles of its recipients?

Rebuttal: Musicians & Writers Rally Round Dylan

Other writers, however, were more supportive of Dylan’s 2016 honor. Stephen King declared himself “ecstatic,” while Joyce Carol Oates deemed it an “inspired & original choice.” In addition, novelist Salman Rushdie praised both the Nobel Academy and Dylan, stating that “the frontiers of literature keep widening, and it’s exciting that the Nobel Prize recognizes that.” He also tweeted that “Dylan is the brilliant inheritor of the bardic tradition,” arguing that the line between song and poetic verse has always been blurred.

Rushdie’s sentiments were echoed by the late Sara Danius, the first woman ever to lead the Swedish Academy, who awarded Dylan the Nobel “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” Danius cited the ancient Greek poets Homer and Sappho, both of whom composed “poetic texts that were meant to be listened to, they were meant to be performed, often together with instruments.” Just as “we still read Homer and Sappho,” Danius claimed that Dylan’s work “can be read, and should be read,” heralding him as “a great poet in the English tradition, in the grand English poetic tradition.” She cited his 1966 album Blonde on Blonde as an exemplification of both Dylan’s formal brilliance and his “pictorial thinking.”

It should also be noted, of course, that Dylan has published memoirs and a poetry collection. In addition, the 2017 Nobel Laureate, Kazuo Ishiguro, is an avowed Bob Dylan fan who wrote songs before turning his considerable talents to prose fiction.

And, of course, fellow musicians were delighted by the news. British singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock, for example, congratulated Dylan on his win and his artistic contribution. Moreover, singer-songwriter, poet, and memoirist Patti Smith performed “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” at Dylan’s award ceremony, which he did not attend.

Bob Dylan’s Response

Awarding Dylan the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature was bound to be controversial, and Dylan remained silent for a few days following the announcement. He finally broke that silence after being directly questioned by the music journalist Edna Gundersen. He described the honor as “amazing” and “incredible,” before stating (somewhat bemusedly, perhaps), “It’s hard to believe … Whoever dreams about something like that?”

As mentioned earlier, however, Dylan did not attend the award ceremony in person due to “pre-existing commitments.” On April 2nd, 2017, Danius confirmed that Dylan had met with the Swedish Academy in a private ceremony to accept his gold medal and diploma. On June 5th, 2017, he gave his Nobel lecture, in which he quoted Homer’s Odyssey :

“Our songs are alive in the land of the living. But songs are unlike literature. They’re meant to be sung, not read. The words in Shakespeare’s plays were meant to be acted on the stage. Just as lyrics in songs are meant to be sung, not read on a page. […] I return once again to Homer, who says, ‘Sing in me, oh Muse, and through me tell the story.’”

Dylan echoes Danius’ comments on Homer and Sappho but seems to diverge from Danius’ thinking on songs as literature. While Danius sought to situate Dylan within a poetic tradition, Dylan states that “songs are unlike literature” insofar as they are intended for performance. But that is equally true of Shakespeare’s plays, as Dylan states, yet surely this does not debar them from being classed as works of literature, just as no one could accuse Shakespeare’s works of lacking literary merit. If anyone had been hoping for Dylan to make a case for songs as a form of literature, Dylan instead seemed intent on further muddying the waters.

Bob Dylan being made a Nobel laureate was certainly not the most surprising nor destabilizing election choice made in 2016, a fact to which Stephen King presumably was referring when he deemed Dylan’s win a “great and good thing in a season of sleaze and sadness.” And nor is he (politically or morally speaking, at least) the most controversial Nobel laureate, following Peter Handke’s win in 2019.

When asked whether Dylan deserved to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, Sara Danius’s reply was simple: “Well, of course he does. He just got it.” And yet the furor surrounding the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature suggests that his worthiness is not so self-evident as Danius would care to imply, and instead begs the question: did he deserve this highest of literary honors? Can counterculture compete with or be equated with high culture?

The Swedish Academy has a history of being criticized for awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature to less-deserving candidates, and not every Nobel laureate will be to everyone’s taste. The question as to whether Dylan is a deserving Nobel laureate or not, therefore, is ultimately for each individual to decide for themselves.

Bob Dylan’s Teenage Love Letters Sold for Over $650,000

By Catherine Dent MA 20th and 21st Century Literary Studies, BA English Literature Catherine holds a first-class BA from Durham University and an MA with distinction, also from Durham, where she specialized in the representation of glass objects in the work of Virginia Woolf. In her spare time, she enjoys writing fiction, reading, and spending time with her rescue dog, Finn.

Frequently Read Together

The Resilient Life of Fidel Castro

7 Major Protests of the Civil Rights Movement

How did the European Union Come Into Existence?

• facebook-rs

Why Bob Dylan Deserves His Nobel Prize

By Rob Sheffield

Rob Sheffield

Congratulations to Bob Dylan , surprise winner of the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature. This is easily the most controversial award since they gave it to the guy who wrote Lord of the Flies , which was controversial only because it came next after the immensely popular 1982 prize for Gabriel García Márquez. Nobody can read the minds of the Nobel committee – it’s not that kind of award. You can’t argue that Dylan jumped the line in front of more deserving candidates, because there’s no internal logic to the process.  Like most literary Nobels, except much more so, it comes out of the blue, giving Dylan fans a whole new glorious enigma to battle over. So settle in. This argument will take us years. If you’re looking to get silly, you better go back to from where you came.

According to the Swedish Academy, Dylan won “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” Of course it’s not poetry, not even sung poetry. It’s songwriting, it’s storytelling, it’s electric noise, it’s a bard exploiting the new-media inventions of his time (amplifiers, microphones, recording studios, radio) for literary performance the way playwrights or screenwriters once did. It’s love, it’s theft, it’s the fire he built on Main Street and shot full of holes. He didn’t win for Chronicles , the finest rock & roll memoir ever . He didn’t win for Tarantula , his famously indecipherable blown-off novel. He didn’t win for his lyric sheets, which remain full of errors he’s never bothered to fix. (No, it’s not “don’t try No-Doz.” It’s “don’t tie no bows.”) He didn’t win for making it through all of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books or inventing the word “if’n.” Or his liner notes (“if you do not know where the Insanity Factory is located, you should hereby take two steps to the right, paint your teeth & go to sleep”) or his jokes (“I ordered some suzette, I said could you please make that crepe”). He won for inventing ways to make songs do what they hadn’t done before.

Editor’s picks

The 250 greatest guitarists of all time, the 500 greatest albums of all time, the 50 worst decisions in movie history, every awful thing trump has promised to do in a second term.

The best argument for Dylan’s Nobel Prize comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson, even though he died a century before Shot of Love . His 1850 essay “Shakespeare; or the Poet,” from the book Representative Men , works as a cheat sheet to Dylan. For Emerson, Shakespeare’s greatness was to exploit the freedoms of a disreputable format, the theater: “Shakespeare, in common with his comrades, esteemed the mass of old plays, waste stock, in which any experiment could be freely tried. Had the prestige which hedges about a modern tragedy existed, nothing could have been done. The rude warm blood of the living England circulated in the play, as in street-ballads.”

This is a key point – Shakespeare was a writer/actor/manager hustling in the commercial theater racket for live crowds. He didn’t publish his plays – didn’t even keep written copies. Once it was onstage, he was on to the next one. (After his death, his friends had to cobble the First Folio together, mostly from working scripts, hence the deplorable state of his texts.) Low prestige meant constant forward motion. The theater was becoming a national passion, “but not a whit less considerable, because it was cheap.” He aimed his poetry at the groundlings: “It must even go into the world’s history, that the best poet led an obscure and profane life, using his genius for the public amusement.”

Dylan didn’t write many books either – his songs came out of that same “rude warm blood.” He makes sure you can’t reduce his songs to their verbal content, whether he’s choosing to go incomprehensible  or comical. He likes to change his mind about the lyrics as he goes along, sometimes in mid-word. As he explained in 2004 , “I’ll take a song I know and simply start playing it in my head. That’s the way I meditate. A lot of people will look at a crack on the wall and meditate, or count sheep or angels or money or something, and it’s a proven fact that it’ll help them relax. I don’t meditate on any of that stuff. I meditate on a song.” The musical performance is what generates the lyric. “I’ll be playing Bob Nolan’s ‘Tumbling Tumbleweeds,’ for instance, in my head constantly – while I’m driving a car or talking to a person or sitting around or whatever. People will think they are talking to me and I’m talking back, but I’m not. I’m listening to the song in my head. At a certain point, some of the words will change and I’ll start writing a song.”

Bob Dylan Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature

Read bob dylan's complete, riveting musicares speech.

The Nobel committee got this right – Dylan’s ongoing achievement in American song is a literary feat to celebrate in this gaudiest of ways. The fact that he’s won this award – yet another scandalous international incident to add to his resume – is something to celebrate as well. “These songs didn’t come out of thin air,” Dylan said last year in his instant-classic MusiCares speech , explaining his roots in the folk, blues and country tradition. “All these songs are connected. Don’t be fooled. I just opened up a different door in a different kind of way.” It’s a door we’ve all been walking through ever since. So here’s to everything Dylan’s built over the past 60 years. And here’s to his next 60 years. 

Watch Chicago Professor Steven Rings discuss the importance of Bob Dylan ‘s Nobel Prize. 

Nancy Pelosi Among 40 House Democrats Demanding Biden Halt Weapon Transfers to Israel

Cole brings plenty, budding actor on ‘yellowstone’ spinoff '1923,' found dead, the far right is crawling with eclipse conspiracy theories, taylor swift soundtracks the five stages of grief with new apple music playlists, see arlo parks bring alt rock-inspired 'devotion' to 'fallon'.

• Late-Night Jams
• By Daniel Kreps

Olivia Rodrigo Brings Out Noah Kahan for Surprise 'Stick Season' Duet at MSG

• Manifesting
• By Charisma Madarang
• Tortured Playlists Department
• By Ethan Millman

J Cole Brought A Knife To A Gunfight On '7 Minute Drill'

• Shots Missed
• By Andre Gee

Doja Cat, Young Miko, Vampire Weekend and All the Songs You Need to Know This Week

• By Rolling Stone

Most Popular

Joaquin phoenix, elliott gould, chloe fineman and more jewish creatives support jonathan glazer's oscars speech in open letter (exclusive), barron trump’s super-rare outing with dad donald may show why we never see them together, georgia secretary of state sent letter to larry david over 'curb' voting law plot, partynextdoor reveals nsfw 'partynextdoor 4' album cover, you might also like, miptv to tackle ai concerns, fast channels and more industry issues, what 2024 nominees wore to their first cmt awards: kelsea ballerini’s flowing costarellos dress, kacey musgraves’ sparkling gomez-gracia minidress and more, the best medicine balls, according to fitness trainers, danny mcbride ‘can’t stand’ movie theaters that serve food and alcohol: ‘you’re going to have to piss’, irs letter an ‘indictment’ of nil collectives’ exempt status.

Rolling Stone is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2024 Rolling Stone, LLC. All rights reserved.

Verify it's you

Please log in.

The Nobel Prize in Literature

Bob Dylan has won this year’s award.

Updated at 8:00 a.m. ET

NEWS BRIEF Bob Dylan has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

BREAKING 2016 #NobelPrize in Literature to Bob Dylan “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition” pic.twitter.com/XYkeJKRfhv — The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 13, 2016

Born Robert Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota, on May 24, 1941, Dylan, now 75, has redefined American music. The Nobel Prize in Literature caps a lifetime of awards for the musician. Among other honors, he has won a dozen Grammys, a Golden Globe, and an Academy Award, as well as the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Dylan has long been considered a favorite for the award. In 2013, Bill Wyman, the arts writer (not the member of the Rolling Stones), made the case in The New York Times for Dylan to be honored with the Nobel Prize in Literature. He argued:

Mr. Dylan’s work remains utterly lacking in conventionality, moral sleight of hand, pop pabulum or sops to his audience. His lyricism is exquisite; his concerns and subjects are demonstrably timeless; and few poets of any era have seen their work bear more influence.

But many others have argued against such a move . Writing in The Atlantic , also in 2013, Zach Schonfeld acknowledged that “Wyman is correct to place Dylan in that small category of pop performers who could rightly be called poets.” But, he added:

[H]e doesn't quite consider the nature of Dylan's craft: songwriting. Albums. Rock music. That's an altogether different vehicle than a poem—or, say, a novel or story collection—and as New York Magazine's Jody Rosen argued in a lengthy quibble with Wyman and others, Dylan's verses certainly "don't sit inert on a page"; nor are his songs "mere word-delivery systems"

Sara Danius, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, defended the choice.

“He is a great poet in the English-speaking tradition, and he is a wonderful sampler, very original sampler,” she said . “He embodies the tradition.”

Dylan’s eponymously titled debut album was released in 1962. His most recent album, Fallen Angels , was released this year. In between them, Dylan released 35 studio albums, nearly a dozen live albums, and countless unreleased and bootleg music—and it’s for this vast body of work that he was honored by the Nobel Committee in Sweden—an honor that comes with an 8 million kronor ($932,786) prize.

Danius, who recommended Blonde on Blonde , Dylan’s 1966 album as a good introduction to his work, said while it might appear the Nobel Committee was broadening the scope of who should get the prize, “If you look back, far back, 2,500 years or so, you discover Homer and Sappho, and they wrote poetic texts that were meant to be listened to, they were meant to be performed, often together with instruments, and it’s the same way with Bob Dylan.

“But we still read Homer and Sappho … and we enjoy it, and same thing with Bob Dylan: He can be read and should be read.”

Dylan is the first American to win the award since Toni Morrison in 1993. Last year’s award was given to Svetlana Alexievich, the Belarusian writer.

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

• Backchannel
• Newsletters
• WIRED Insider
• WIRED Consulting

Victoria Woollaston-Webber

Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize speech reveals how Buddy Holly and Moby Dick inspired his music

https://vimeo.com/220274268

Almost eight months since he was awarded the prize for Literature, singer-songwriter Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize speech has finally submitted to the Swedish Academy in Stockholm – just days before the deadline.

The prize was given to the 76-year-old in December "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition". A pre-requisite of being awarded the $1.2 million prize money that accompanies the accolade is delivering a Nobel lecture and Dylan had until June 10 to submit it.

Subscribe to WIRED

The lecture audio, hosted on Vimeo , is accompanied by a photo of the singer pictured on a visit to Stockholm in 1966. The lecture begins: "When I first received this Nobel Prize for Literature, I got to wondering exactly how my songs related to literature," Dylan explains. "I wanted to reflect on it and see where the connection was. I’m going to try to articulate that to you. And most likely it will go in a roundabout way, but I hope what I say will be worthwhile and purposeful."

He credits Buddy Holly for "the dawning" of his love of music. "Buddy wrote songs – songs that had beautiful melodies and imaginative verses," Dylan says. "And he sang great – sang in more than a few voices. He was the archetype. Everything I wasn’t and wanted to be. I saw him only but once, and that was a few days before he was gone. I had to travel a hundred miles to get to see him play, and I wasn’t disappointed."

The Nobel laureate continues that his love of folk music was boosted by the "principles and sensibilities" he learnt from reading Don Quixote , Ivanhoe , Robinson Crusoe , Gulliver’s Travels and Tale of Two Cities . Dylan then goes on to detail how three books in particular – Moby Dick, All Quiet on the Western Front and The Odyssey – influenced his life and his music.

"When Odysseus in The Odyssey visits the famed warrior Achilles in the underworld – Achilles, who traded a long life full of peace and contentment for a short one full of honour and glory – tells Odysseus it was all a mistake," concludes Dylans. "'I just died, that’s all.' There was no honour. No immortality. And that if he could, he would choose to go back and be a lowly slave to a tenant farmer on Earth rather than be what he is.

"That’s what songs are too. Our songs are alive in the land of the living. But songs are unlike literature. They’re meant to be sung, not read. The words in Shakespeare’s plays were meant to be acted on the stage. I hope some of you get the chance to listen to these lyrics the way they were intended to be heard: in concert or on record or however people are listening to songs these days. I return once again to Homer, who says, 'Sing in me, oh Muse, and through me tell the story.'"

David Kushner

Andy Greenberg

Louise Matsakis

The prize has been awarded to 113 Nobel Laureates since 1901.

Dylan was born on May 24, 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota and grew up in Hibbing. After he moved to New York in 1961 he met record producer John Hammond and signed a contract for his debut album, Bob Dylan in 1962.

He has released 37 studio albums, with the latest being Fallen Angels , released in May 2016.

During Alfred Nobel's final years, he wrote a series of fictional stories and literature was the fourth prize the scientist mentioned in his will, which read: "The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: /- - -/ one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction..."

This article was originally published by WIRED UK

Morgan Meaker

Matt Reynolds

Amanda Hoover

Aarian Marshall

Bob Dylan & the Nobel Prize in Literature

• Introduction
• Bob Dylan @ UWF!
• LIbrary Materials about (and by) Bob Dylan
• The Nobel Prize in Literature
• Bob Dylan Lyrics
• The American Folk Tradition

Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, 1963 March on Washington Performance

Your Librarian

The Nobel Prize in Literature goes to . . .  BOB DYLAN? 

When the Swedish Academy announced Bob Dylan winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2016, "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition,"   some people were shocked. Bob Dylan is a musician, not a writer. Or, is he?

This guide will explore the Nobel Prize for Literature itself and Bob Dylan within that context and provide resources to help with examining the issue.

Questions this guide and its resources will consider are:

• Are Bob Dylan's lyrics poetry? Do their political and social relevance provide merit in the literary world?
• Is it "fair" to have a musician win this prize when musicians can be given awards by other organizations?
• How might Bob Dylan's cultural influence, such as his performing at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (perhaps most famous for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech), have influenced the Swedish Academy? Are those worthy considerations?
• What is the criteria for winning such an award and what other writers have won it in the past?

This guide will not answer these questions, but instead, give you the tools to make up yo ur mind.  

And maybe, learn about Bob Dylan and the Nobel Prize for Literature along th e way!

Bob Dylan, performing at the Civil Rights March on Washington, August 28, 1963 .  Photograph by Rowland Scherman.

Bob Dylan: The Poet

Bob Dylan at the Poetry Foundation

News Articles about Bob Dylan & the Award

• Bob Dylan Wins Nobel Prize, Redefining the Boundaries of Literature - New York Times
• Bob Dylan, Titan Of American Music, Wins 2016 Nobel Prize In Literature - NPR
• Does a Musician Have Any Right to Win the Nobel Prize in Literature?
• Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize Isn't about Music - The Atlantic
• Why Bob Dylan Deserves His Nobel Prize - Rolling Stone
• Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize is the Crowning Achievement of His Extraordinary Life - Time Life
• Bob Dylan is Not the First Songwriter to Win the Nobel Prize in Literature - The Guardian
• Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize for Literature: Authors react - Entertainment Weekly

More articles may be found on the Internet.  Keywords to try, separately or in combination:

Bob Dylan Nobel Prize Bob Dylan Lyrics Literature Bob Dylan Nobel Prize Writers (or Authors) Bob Dylan Lyrics Poetry

In Google, unlike most of our databases, you may also try typing in a question, such as: Are Bob Dylan's Lyrics Poetry? Additionally, quotation marks will keep an exact phrase together (ex. "Bob Dylan" "Nobel Prize"); however, in this case, relevancy rankings will yield good results without using that search strategy.

• Next: Bob Dylan @ UWF! >>
• Last Updated: Aug 24, 2023 9:58 AM
• URL: https://libguides.uwf.edu/bobdylan

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Book News & Features

Bob dylan wins 2016 nobel prize in literature.

Dylan won "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition," according to the citation by the Swedish Academy, the committee that annually decides the winner.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

When Bob Dylan was once honored back in the 1960s, he was asked by a reporter if he saw himself as a singer or a poet. And he responded, I think of myself as more of a song and dance man. As of today, Bob Dylan is a singing, dancing Nobel laureate.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN'")

BOB DYLAN: (Singing) And you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone. Oh, the times, they are a-changin'.

INSKEEP: Dylan was awarded that honor by the Nobel Committee. He's always had that voice - Unbearable to some but powerful in expression because of what he had to say - sometimes poetry, sometimes stream of consciousness, always making you think.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "A HARD RAIN'S A-GONNA FALL")

DYLAN: (Singing) And I'll tell it and speak it and think it and breathe it.

Copyright © 2016 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.