21st-Century Dylan - by Laurence Estanove & Adrian Grafe & Andrew McKeown & Claire Hélie (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

Bob Dylan has constantly reinvented the persona known as "Bob Dylan," renewing the performance possibilities inherent in his songs, from acoustic folk, to electric rock and a late, hybrid style which even hints at so-called world music and Latin American tones. Then in 2016, his achievements outside of performance - as a songwriter - were acknowledged when he was awarded the Nobel Literature Prize. Dylan has never ceased to broaden the range of his creative identity, taking in painting, film, acting and prose writing, as well as advertising and even own-brand commercial production. The book highlights how Dylan has brought his persona(e) to different art forms and cultural arenas, and how they in turn have also created these personae.

This volume consists of multidisciplinary essays written by cultural historians, musicologists, literary academics and film experts, including contributions by critics Christopher Ricks and Nina Goss. Together, the essays reveal Dylan's continuing artistic development and self-fashioning, as well as the making of a certain legitimized Dylan through critical and public recognition in the new millennium.

Review Quotes

"In the way he has often challenged us to keep pace, Dylan has layered his "long twenty-first century" with complex albums and other-than-song strata, a range of accomplishments richly deserving critical attention. Thankfully, the editors of this new collection have given us helpful guideposts, bringing a welcome focus to not only 1997's Time Out of Mind and the recordings that followed, but also to Dylan's visual works, and to the ways and reasons we observers and critics honor the breadth and depth of his career." --James O'Brien, writer, editor, musician, filmmaker

"This lively and insightful collection of essays opens new perspectives on Bob Dylan's creative endeavors over the past several decades. The essays included here demonstrate once and for all that Dylan's most recent work may be among his best. The volume is an impressive tribute to Dylan's ongoing creative growth." --Timothy Hampton, author of Bob Dylan: How the Songs Work

About the Author

Laurence Estanove is an independent scholar and co-editor of the online journal FATHOM. Her more recent research focuses on popular music, cultural geography, and digital sociability. She has co-edited two books including Thomas Hardy, Poet: New Perspectives (2015), and is currently working on a book-length study of the independent music scene of Glasgow, Scotland.

Adrian Grafe is an Oxford graduate, a Fellow of the English Association and currently an English Professor at Artois University, France. He has published broadly on poetry and popular music. His work on Bob Dylan includes a piece on Francis Cabrel's French versions of Dylan's songs (2019) and another on 'Murder Most Foul' (TLS, 15 May 2020). His novel Back to Vienna is due out in 2022.

Andrew McKeown teaches English at the University of Poitiers, France and co-hosts Half Men Half Biscuits, a weekly radio show on Radio Pulsar 95.9 FM. He has written a number of articles on poetry and fiction and most recently co-edited with Adrian Grafe Roads from Arras (2018), a centenary tribute to the writing of Edward Thomas. His collection of
sardonic verses entitled You What? was published in 2017 and is to be followed by Spurts, a novelette due out in spring 2021.

Claire Hélie is a senior lecturer in the Arts Department at Université de Lille, France. She has published several articles on contemporary poetry, drama and translation and co-edited the No Dialect Please, You're a Poet - English Dialect in Poetry in the 20th and 21st Centuries (2019).