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“I Is Another”: In Search of Bob Dylan’s Many Masks

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Debanjali Roy1 & Tanmoy Putatunda2

1, 2Assistant Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, Adamas University. Email: tanmoy.putatunda@gmail.com

Received March 9, 2017; Revised on June 17, Accepted June 17, 2017; Published June 28, 2017.

Volume 9, Number 1, 2017 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v9n1.s07

Abstract

The phenomenon called Robert Zimmerman aka Bob Dylan has always intrigued and fascinated the world for decades. The amorphous nature of his musical journey makes it difficult to map and define his career as an artist. Nonetheless, it’s been a while that academia has embraced Dylan and a number of books and research articles have since made their foray to analyse and appreciate a myriad career that has spanned across more than five decades. Through an overall study of Dylan’s musical oeuvre, this paper attempts to trace the diverse, fractured self that lies beneath the mask of the pop-icon.

Keywords: music, songs, self, enlightenment, postmodern, faith, protest.

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Bob Dylan: Poet of Disruption, Dissonance and an Aesthetic of Dissent

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Shobana Mathews

Christ University, Bangalore. ORCID 0000-0001-9700-9420.

Email: shobhana.p.mathews@christuniversity.in

Volume 9, Number 1, 2017 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v9n1.s03

Received February 27, 2017; Revised on June 10, Accepted June 12, 2017; Published June 15, 2017.

Abstract

This paper is a brief study of the pivotal figure of folk rock, Bob Dylan. Acclaimed as a songwriter and singer, he was also the poetic voice of the counter culture of the nineteen sixties in America. The counter culture sought to unseat the mainstream establishment that seemed obsessed with war, conservative ideals and religious nationalism. Dylan burst onto this scene ‘already a legend’ and ‘the unwashed phenomenon’ (Baez, 1975) projecting the image of the original vagabond and troubadour. 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 philosophy and 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. This paper studies Dylan, the performer and the writer who has masterfully disrupted  most accepted  literary modes using the dissonance-rich space of Rock music while retaining some of the traditional forms of poetic utterance.

Keywords: Dissonance, disruption, aesthetic of dissent, folk song, protest, rock and roll, Bob Dylan

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On Reading ‘Streer Patra’, Mrinal’s Letter to Her husband

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Shyamali Dasgupta, Seth Soorajmull Jalan Girl’s College, India

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Abstract

Tagore’s famous short story, ‘Streer Patra’, highlights the suffering, ignominy and neglect that women have to face in a male dominated society. Although set in late nineteenth century Kolkata, Tagore’s story has relevance for the discerning reader even today. It dwells upon issues like child-marriage, commoditization of women, the appalling state of woman-and-child healthcare, high rates of infant mortality as well as the marginalisation of economically dependent women. The story also exposes the terrible plight of orphaned, homeless girls without any means, like Bindu whose way to survive was to accept servitude and total humiliation, from which death becomes the only form of escape. Mrinal’s final rejection of her marital state and decision of leaving her husband is a lone woman’s act of defiance against the relentless subjugation of women in society. Keep Reading

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