“EXPECTING RAIN”: T.S. ELIOT’S THE WASTE LAND THROUGH BOB DYLAN’S ‘DESOLATION ROW’
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2024-09-24
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Jaén: Universidad de Jaén
Resumen
[ES] Cuando Bob Dylan fue galardonado con el Nobel en literatura en 2016, hubo una polémica literaria que
continúa ejerciendo presión sobre los estudios en cultura popular, distinguiendo ésta de los discursos
artísticos y literarios canónicos (más respetados tradicionalmente). Este trabajo fin de máster plantea
que, tal y como fueron concebidas en su origen, la presencia de una composición instrumental en una
obra literaria no imposibilita la lectura filológica de ésta, ni tampoco la estima menos “literaria”.
Teniendo esto en cuenta, nuestra tesis implicará un estudio comparado de la canción ‘Desolation Row’
del cantautor norteamericano Bob Dylan (en su álbum Highway 61 Revisited, de 1965) y The Waste
Land (La Tierra baldía, 1922 del autor modernista norteamericano y también Premio Nobel en
literatura, T.S. Eliot. Las relaciones intertextuales de estas obras se tratarán desde una perspectiva del
simbolismo y de la crítica literaria de arquetipos, creada por el psicoanalista suizo Carl G. Jung. Estas
similitudes en las obras pondrán de manifiesto como la canción de Dylan es, en realidad, una
reescritura consciente del poema de Eliot; además, en su recreación libre, Dylan compone una Tierra
baldía nueva, basada en el contexto económico y socio-político de la segunda mitad del siglo veinte.
[EN] The controversy surrounding the Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to Bob Dylan in 2016 is, still to this day, running rampant; those unfamiliar with Dylan’s oeuvre find it hard to comprehend how music and literature could be related, as if they had never been conceived conjointly in the first place. Thinking back to the (numerous) great works of epic poetry that stand right on the pinnacle of World literature, it seems obvious that any manifestations portraying music and poetry as almost antithetical to one another must cease. With this in mind, the following dissertation will involve a comparative study of the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s ‘Desolation Row’ (from his album Highway 61 Revisited, 1965) and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922). These two poems will be examined with regard to the symbolism that characterises them, and from a Jungian perspective based on —literary— archetypal theory and criticism. The main purpose of this dissertation is to provide an alternative reading to Bob Dylan’s ‘Desolation Row’ that renders it as a conscious rewriting of Eliot’s poem. Dylan’s song not only holds clear allusions to Eliot’s Wasteland, but, as an artistic recreation, it becomes a fictional representation of a new modernity that the second half of the twentieth century is immersed in.
[EN] The controversy surrounding the Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to Bob Dylan in 2016 is, still to this day, running rampant; those unfamiliar with Dylan’s oeuvre find it hard to comprehend how music and literature could be related, as if they had never been conceived conjointly in the first place. Thinking back to the (numerous) great works of epic poetry that stand right on the pinnacle of World literature, it seems obvious that any manifestations portraying music and poetry as almost antithetical to one another must cease. With this in mind, the following dissertation will involve a comparative study of the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s ‘Desolation Row’ (from his album Highway 61 Revisited, 1965) and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922). These two poems will be examined with regard to the symbolism that characterises them, and from a Jungian perspective based on —literary— archetypal theory and criticism. The main purpose of this dissertation is to provide an alternative reading to Bob Dylan’s ‘Desolation Row’ that renders it as a conscious rewriting of Eliot’s poem. Dylan’s song not only holds clear allusions to Eliot’s Wasteland, but, as an artistic recreation, it becomes a fictional representation of a new modernity that the second half of the twentieth century is immersed in.