The Academic Bob Dylan

Gordon Ball, professor of English and Fine Arts at Virginia Military Institute, has nominated Dylan for the Nobel Prize in Literature every year since 1996, when he was first urged to do so by the ’50s beatnik poet Alan Ginsberg.

Ginsberg wrote in a letter: “Dylan is a major American bard & minstrel of the XX Century, whose words have influenced many generations throughout the world. He deserves a Nobel Prize in recognition of his mighty and universal powers.”

The lyrics to Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” are included in the Norton Introduction to English Literature, a standard high school and college textbook that is compiled according to generally accepted canon of English Literature. Dylan has also received an honorary doctorate in music from Princeton University.

Prof. Thomas, was inspired to teach the class after talking to a colleague about the prospects of a seminar on the New York Yankees. He started thinking outside of his own discipline, the Classics, and it didn’t take too long to come up with the idea of a course based on Dylan, who Thomas has been listening to for the past 40 years.

“As part of my own intellectual development, I’ve seen the literature behind his songs and the literary effect behind the combination of his songs and his lyrics and his music which work in a remarkable symbiosis,” Thomas says.

While some might doubt that the course on Dylan is a legitimate intellectual exercise, Thomas viewed the prospect differently.

“Dylan is this clearly literary and cultural figure, perhaps the primary literary and cultural figure in this country in the last half of the 20th century,” he asserts. “If that’s not worth two hours a week for a semester than it’s not clear to me what is.”

Thomas recently nominated Dylan for a Harvard honorary degree in Arts and thinks Dylan should have received the Nobel Prize in Literature long ago. He also thinks what makes Dylan so timeless is his anonymity and the universality of his music. He cites the song “Masters of War,” which was written in the ’60s but is widely held to be relevant today, whereas more topical songs like Eminem’s recent tirade against President Bush, “Mosh,” likely won’t be remembered beyond next year.

Sullivan compares the ever-fluctuating persona, or voice, in Dylan’s lyric poetry to that of the classic poets: “Every once in a while you get a poet like a Horace, or a Shakespeare or a Dylan who’s able to play around with their persona and actually make their persona the subject of the poetry itself.”

Clem B. Wood ’08, a student in the Dylan seminar, unquestionably sees a great academic quality to the class. In addition to viewing Dylan as one of the great American poets, Wood sees Dylan’s influence as pervasive even beyond music and literature.

“Culturally, Dylan represents the most American of figures, and he has a keensense of history,” Wood says. “From wearing paint on the 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue tour, as if a blackface minstrel, to parading around in 10-gallon hats worthy of aCivil War general, Dylan manages to show an appreciation of Americana ineven his physical appearance.”

However, regardless of the debate of the academic merits of Dylan, Sullivan thinks people are asking the wrong question.

“It’s really not so much ‘Is Dylan a valid object of study,’ but you have to decide if rock and roll or American music is a valid object of study,” he says. “And once you realize that it is, or once you concede that it is, then all arrows will point to Dylan.”