STOCKHOLM, Sweden – How many roads must a man walk down, before you call him a … Nobel Prize-winning songwriter?
It’s a question being asked increasingly in literary circles, as the annual debate over who should win the Nobel Prize in literature – to be announced today – tosses out a familiar, but surprising, candidate: Bob Dylan.
While many music critics agree that Dylan is among the most profound songwriters in modern music, his repeated nomination for the Nobel Prize has raised a vexing question among literary authorities: Should song lyrics qualify for literature’s most prestigious award?
Christopher Ricks, co-director of the Editorial Institute at Boston University – and an avid Dylan fan who has written scholarly papers on the songwriter’s work – said the question is “tricky.”
“I don’t think there’s anybody that uses words better than he does,” said Ricks, the author of highly regarded works of literary criticism such as “The Force of Poetry” and “Allusion to the Poets,” as well as books on T.S. Eliot, Lord Alfred Tennyson and John Keats.
“But I think his is an art of a mixed medium,” Ricks said. “I think the question would not be whether he deserves (the Nobel prize) as an honor to his art. The question would be whether his art can be described as literature.”
It definitely can, said Gordon Ball, an author and literature professor at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Va., who has nominated Dylan every year since 1996.
“Poetry and music are linked,” Ball said. “And Dylan has helped strengthen that relationship, like the troubadours of old.”
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