On the 19th of June, 2020, Bob Dylan released his 39th studio album, Rough And Rowdy Ways, his first collection of original songs in eight years.
In the first chapter of this Definitely Dylan mini-series, Laura begins her exploration of the new album by going back to Dylan’s 2016 Nobel win. What’s the difference between songs and literature? Who’s the secret hero of Rough And Rowdy Ways? And what does Homer have to do with all this? Listen to find out!
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Transcript:
‘Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end,
after he plundered the stronghold
on the proud height of Troy.’
[Homer, The Odyssey, trans. by Robert Fitzgerald (1961)]
Almost 3000 years ago, in Ancient Greece, the blind bard Homer composed two epic poems that have influenced and impacted our culture to this very day. They have inspired countless artworks, throughout the centuries, including literary works, from Virgil, to James Joyce, to Margaret Atwood. Both of Homer’s epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, begin with little prologues like the one we just heard the beginning of. In these invocations of the Muse, the poet himself asks the goddess of inspiration and the arts to help him relay the story he is about to tell.
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