This webinar is free and open to public. Pre-registration is required.
Freewheelin’ with Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan, “the unwashed phenomenon, the original vagabond” (Baez 1975, Diamonds and Rust) projects the image of the archetypal wandering minstrel and troubadour with the air of a modern-day Diogenes. A glance at a selection of some of his best-known lyrics disabuses one of the notions of his being uninitiated into the discourse of classical literature. He draws freely on and engages with ideas from texts that are sometimes even obscure. The Nobel he was awarded in October 2016 recognized his art for evolving new modes of poetic expression. His response was in character. Dylan, the performer and the writer has masterfully employed and disrupted most accepted literary modes using the dissonance – rich space of Rock music while retaining some of the traditional forms of poetic utterance. His work and poetic persona are a constant refusal to be fixed in a ‘formulated phrase’.
About the speaker:
Dr. Shobana P Mathews is an Associate Professor in the Department of English Studies at CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru. She has over 22 years of teaching experience. For her PhD research, she looked at aural narratives and spatiality in the works of Mark Knopfler. Her MPhil research was titled Folksong as Protest: A Study of the Works of Bob Dylan. This was in 1996, twenty years ahead of Dylan being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She believes literature is to be lived. She has been published in prestigious periodicals like The Hindu, The Week, and The Deccan Herald, and was profiled by The Times of India as one of the ‘coolest college teachers in Bangalore’.
Date: 8th May 2020
Time: 3:00 PM
Registration link: bit.ly/dottalks0508