Dylan the Postmodernist?

I had originally thought that I wasn’t going to write much about Modern Times. I was wrong. What started out as a short, indignant review of the musical borrowings on the album, was then followed up by a somewhat longer discussion of the lyrical borrowings from H. Timrod, which I have now wrapped up in a longish piece which traverses the death of the author, copyright laws, various connections between ethics and aesthetics, oh yes, and Dylan’s later work. The last piece has so much significant use of italics that I don’t dare to let it out in a plain-html version, so you will have to download a pdf file. I’ve made it available in two versions: one with only the article itself, the other bundled with the two previous texts (both links go to pdf files).

The many ways of stealing

I’ve mentioned it before: I don’t mind Dylan lifting lines from Timrod. I do mind his uncredited appropriations of entire pieces of music, but little snippets of text here and there — that’s a completely different matter.

In all the many discussions and opinions about this matter, two areas have been mentioned with some frequency, either in order to emphasise the offense, or to diminish it. In each their way, they add some interesting twists to the case, although they don’t change my verdict concerning the musical theft.

Academic borrowing

One of the references is to the academic world. The argument goes that if something like this had happened there, Dylan would have been sent home with an F and a relegation.

I would argue against this, although in some cases he comes close.

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