Bob Dylan is unquestionably the greatest living singer-songwriter in the English language, but what makes him great?

How can you measure greatness? Is it longevity? lasting popularity? number of would-be imitators (“new Dylans”)? number of live concerts or songs written and recorded? total number of records sold or number of songs or albums that reached “the top of the charts”? or winning of the Nobel Prize for Literature?

How can you measure greatness in any of the arts? Greatness is unmeasurable, and yet most people agree on Shakespeare’s immeasurable greatness. Likewise for Michelangelo’s, Bach’s, Goethe’s, Beethoven’s, Picasso’s, Glenn Gould’s greatness – nor should we overlook Mahatma Gandhi’s, Martin Luther King’s, and countless spiritual leaders’ immeasurable greatness.

Bob Dylan is incomparably great; it is meaningless to compare his songs with the songs of the Beatles or Enya. The only productive comparison of Dylan’s works is that of his output, album by album, with his other albums, of one Dylan song with other Dylan songs.

This is what we will do at each class: listen to, read, and discuss key songs on his successive albums. Having begun by examining Blonde on Blonde and John Wesley Harding, we will move on to Nashville Skyline and the rest of his voluminous oeuvre. Join us for the conversation and immersion in an incomparable poetic musical world.

Dylan songs eminently worthy of treatment as literature that we will discuss in the near future: A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, To Ramona, My Back Pages, When I Paint My Masterpiece （講師記）

※授業は英語で行います。