Bob Dylan

Dylan has been with and without belief. What has been constant is his prophecy. He can invoke Jehovah, Jesus, or the Blakean deity of 'Every Grain of Sand.' Dylan saw the end times coming with 'Hard Rain' over 60 years ago, a song he sung as a Christian, a Jew, a lingerie salesman. He is prophecy on his own, and Green's powerful book is a testament to how it 'feels.'

Auteur
Jeffrey Edward Green is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of The Shadow of Unfairness and The Eyes of the People.

Texte du rabat

In Bob Dylan: Prophet Without God, Jeffrey Edward Green defends the idea of Bob Dylan as a modern-day prophet, albeit a prophet of an unprecedented type. Placing Dylan into conversation with a wide array of intellectual figures, Green argues that Dylan is not a prophet of salvation, but rather a "prophet without God." Dylan speaks to the ideals that have animated earlier prophets but breaks from past tradition by testifying to the conflicts between these ideals, leading him to make novel contributions to the meaning of self-reliance, the quest for rapprochement between the religious and non-religious, and the problem of how ordinary people might operate in a fallen political world.

Résumé
Throughout his career, Bob Dylan has always been more than a musician. Whether as an icon of the social movements of the 1960s, a convert to evangelical Christianity publicly wrestling with his faith, or simply a poet of genius, Dylan has occupied a position of moral leadership for more than half a century. Examining these roles collectively, the award-winning political philosopher Jeffrey Edward Green offers a vision of Dylan as a modern-day prophet, providing an overarching account of the significance of Dylan's political, religious, and ethical ideas. Green suggests Dylan is not a prophet of salvation, but rather a "prophet of diremption." Dylan speaks to the ideals that have animated earlier prophets--social justice, individual freedom, and adherence to God--but breaks from past tradition by testifying to the conflicts between these ideals. By examining Dylan's work across his career, Green shows how the humble folk singer from Minnesota who went on to win the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature has made novel contributions to the meaning of self-reliance, the quest for rapprochement between the religious and non-religious, and the problem of how ordinary people might operate in a fallen political world.

Contenu

• preface

• Introduction: What Kind of Prophet is Bob Dylan?

• Part I: A Rebel Rebelling against the Rebellion

• Part II: Never Could Learn to Drink that Blood and Call It Wine

• Part III: Strengthen the Things that Remain

• Afterword

• Acknowledgments

• Index