BUT WAIT: Is Bob Dylan’s Work Really Literature?
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- Опубліковано 1 лис 2016
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The question “What is literature?” is not one that often captures the public's attention. But recently, it did, after famed American folk musician Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for literature. The takes, they were both many… and hot… hinging on one central conceit: Is Bob Dylan’s work...literary? And if it is, how does it then relate to, uh, y’know, literature? Like, big books and stuff. To answer that question, we have to depart from it for a while, and ask what sort of thing do we normally call “literature”, and why? Watch the episode and let us know what you think in the comments below!
This episode was co-written by TheLitCritGuy
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Bob Dylan winning the nobel prize proves that times, they are..... different than before.
vitamindubya I see what you did there. Lol pretty good
vitamindubya you dont know nothing about Dylan. know tout shit. liste to Blood on the tracks, Desire.
That hurts
Ugh, I hope you don’t procreate
a-changing
Dylan's lyrics, (words) have blown my mind more that any book I've ever read. So congrats Bob.
"A dystopia in which Shakespeare has ceased to be considered literature" is a pretty central plot line to Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World." Just saying.
If sci-fi isn’t literature, that would disclude: 1984, Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World
Animal Farm = sci-fi??
A lot of the Ivory Tower boys think Sci-Fi is the literature of the future, being written today.
.
Alas, Babylon.
Those are dystopian novels .
Sci-fi definatly is literature, and especially Dune that he shows in the video
"You’ve been with the professors
And they’ve all liked your looks
With great lawyers you have
Discussed lepers and crooks
You’ve been through all of
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books
You’re very well read
It’s well known
Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is"
Do you, Mister Mike?
(jk, loved the show and know this won't be read so, cheers)
Hahaha I was going to quote the same tune. Great minds...
To everyone typing "first" no that is definitely not literature.
That is a great comment.
I disagree. "First" could be considered one of few forms of literature specific of the Internet.
The last time I was this early, "First" was literature.
I'm somewhat surprised that the first comment reply to this wasn't "First"
fartzinwind FIRST. I'm the first to reply to your comment and I insist to state it. As an Internet-specific form of literature, of course.
all this intelligent discussion and I'm just boggled that "literature" isn't a synonym for "written word"
That's what I was thinking. When I was taught about literature in school, that's what it meant. Anything that was written. There was poetic literature, that was words written to look pretty instead of just communicate. There was dramatic literature that was words meant to be dramatized like plays, teleplays, and screenplays. Then there was prose, which was just plain text. There was no standard or grand idea behind it. Just anything that was written.
Exactly. Until now I thought the only point of disagreement was if words written with the purpose of being sung could be considered poetry (and by consequence literature) or not. Never heard of this discussion about poetry not being considered literature.
It is. Except for people who want to complicate it unnecessarily with completely arbitrary standards.
Wouldn't this mean that the written word, when spoken aloud, can no longer have literary value? I am not saying that such a proposition isn't possible, but it would mean that a play does not have literary value if you see it performed rather than read it, which would also mean that plays written with the intention of being performed are inherently less valuable, in literary terms, than non-performance related texts. Wouldn't it? It would mean that if I listened to an audiobook of a great literary work, it will not have any literary value.
AmericanGrotesque No, of course not. Even if it's read aloud, it was still written at some point. It has literary value if it has value to people who might write letters of their own.
What is literature ?
Dylan : " Come writers and critics
Who prophesies with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'."
This's literature for sure
That whole song is amazing lyrically. He spoke volumes so nonchalantly.
The short version for Dylans rightful award: “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”.
The greatest writer of my lifetime in any genre...period!
"He's lit fam."
That was my favorite thing.
Here's an idea! Bob Dylan is literature because he writes lyrics.
Gorgeous lyrics. Surreal lyrics. Lyrics that change consciousness. Yes, lyrics.
Kant Touch This that would be lyrical, or lyricist but I see your point
Kant Touch This well said 👍👍👍
He might write lyrics, but the performance and exposure of those lyrics are through songs, not literature.
@@dave-oh3549 that is not entirely correct, you can get just as much from reading his songs as you can by listening to them.
Lyrics are poetry and poetry is literature. It's that simple.
I'm every eagle, a salami am I.
Hocus and pocus, a beards outside!
Two cats yell and yoga pokes.
Trip over melons, thumbs up and vote!
Whichever person decided to put the image of Frank Herbert's "Dune" during the "not literature" part, please go rethink your life choices. Like, seriously. Please.
And also read that book.
I was thinking the same thing
I was thinking the same thing
We studied Bob Dylan in my high school English class. And I met people from other schools, in other states, that also studied his work in school. That was 10 years ago. It may be now that he's being recognized in that way on such a high level, but it's been happening.
Hey, Mike. I've been subscribed to this channel since its very first upload and it's varied between my favorite channel and one of my favorite channels for a long time.
Some videos have been some of my favorite film viewing experiences full stop.
With that said, I think this is the best one yet. It's thoroughly excellent. Keep up the good work.
Can I just say that that version of Mr Tambourine Man is...... amazing...
Damn me, this channel is awesome. They even sneak the Patreon and Merch into the sources, so much that only a curious one would look into it. Nicely done, I love it.
Everything is everything.
TootTootMcbumbersnazzle but nothing is a word......
TootTootMcbumbersnazzle fair point I guess. All I have to do is not think about it and it continues to exist by not existing.
viva, viva viva all
viva viva viva, viva all...
Voomroom - FYI: Your comment is a line in Bruce Springsteen's lyrical-song masterpiece, "You're Missing". A brilliant song with respect to 9/11. Both great artists - musically and lyrically . . . Sirs Dylan and Springsteen.
The National - literature
"He's Lit Fam" has so many applicable meanings here :)
When I teach freshman Literature, we have a conversation about "What is literature?" on the first day (as part of the "Why do we study literature?" discussion). The way I define it for my students is that literature is any "written art", which inevitably leads a student to ask, "Well, then, what is art?" We spend some time talking about semiotics, aesthetics, narrative, conveyance of emotion from artist to audience, agents of selection (like museum curators and literature book editors), and finally: subjectivity.
In the end, after building off of their questions and responses, I leave them with as succinct a definition that I am able: Literature is any work which (a) required a writer, and (b) we assign not-purely-utilitarian value to.
Throughout the class we look at classic poetry and stories from the textbook, of course, but we also study pop song lyrics, sci-fi and fantasy stories, sequential art narratives (comics), and interactive fiction (video games), as all of those things meet the 2 conditions presented, despite not usually being part of a lit class.
this is a massive topic, and the video only really scratches the surface of the number of questions we could ask. beyond asking what do we '"normally" consider literature, who is the 'we' that is doing the considering? an english professor is going to have a different opinion from a small lit mag editor who in turn have different feelings on the issue from the cashier at the super-market. (not to mention one person could fit all three descriptions at different times in their life) what's their gender or race? age? do we supposed some sort of world audience or a subset and do we divide that by country? language?
from my own experience with writing, the designation of literature isn't really a reflection on the quality of attributes of a given work of writing. what gets considered literature says more about society that applies that label. signaling something as literature, as being notable above just being a story, or genre fiction, a teen's angst poetry, etc., it's a way to say 'we respect this work' or 'we respect this writer.' works we respect are works encouraged to be imitated, discussed, considered worthy of deeper examination, the works we present to students as a model for learning. we can also see that in how it functions as a gatekeeper, historically with the exclusion of certain kinds of stories, certain kinds of artists. (a whole topic of it's own that i won't get into here for sake of brevity. )
my impression is that bob dylan being awarded a nobel prize is about conveying that kind of respect and recognition. i'd love to hear what the actual arguments in the room were, for and against the decision. could be as simple as 'well there's no music prize' or something expansive like 'we consider the literature prize as to be all encompassing the entirety of human creative effort as it all descends from the same ancient traditions and so we can award to whomever we please'
I remember I had an argument on this topic in my AP Lit class senior year of high school. We had been told that we could choose a novel or play for the topic of this big paper we had to write and I asked if instead of doing a play I could do the paper on a film. She told me no, because this is a literature class and while she likes movies they aren't literature. I asked her why a screenplay is any less literature than a play. Long story short, I wound up doing the paper on the movie Fight Club and it got an A.
He's a storyteller and a poet, he just puts it to music. He can tell a complete, awesome, and deep stories in 5 minute songs. He tells stories that would take normal people entire novels to convey.
What do you mean, "not accepting his win?" He did.
Originally he didn’t really come out to accept it, but eventually he took the award in a private ceremony where he showed up in a hoodie and jeans. Legend!
Literature is art created out of words. Poetry had almost no vehicle but it found its way into popular music. I will remember to my dying day the line, "Just to dance beneath the starry sky with one hand waving free.
I thought all written words are literature. When you say "literary vs. non-literary" works you're more referring to high art vs. low art. Maybe my definition of literature is inaccurate?
Very narrow.
I think we ascribe prestige to certain values, call the totality of those values "literature," and then use those values to judge or call things literature. this values usually come from culture and are contested frequently. that's part of what makes art subjective
I have never played Overwatch and yet I am SO HYPED ABOUT THE NEXT VIDEO.
5 days until the dystopia hits, better get writing kids.
TLDR: Dylan's songs are not literature, but his song lyrics are literature.
I think that the video conflates two different things: categorization and evaluation. Any written work is literature in the categorical sense. However, one could also say that not all written works are Literature in the evaluative sense. This sort of conflation smacks of the No True Scotsman fallacy to me: "If it doesn't meet my criteria, it isn't (real) Literature." Valuations aren't necessarily a bad thing, but we have to keep in mind that valuations are simply based on the preference bell curve and not some objective fact. I think that is what Eagleton was talking about. What people value in literature can and does change over time. However, again, this is primarily speaking to what people value in literature, what sorts of things belong in the literature category. This comment, for example, is literature even if no one considers it to be Literature. But what is literature (as a category)?
The simplest category is that literature is any expressive written work. In this way, song lyrics are literature in the same way that poetry is literature. A song isn't literature, because, while expressive, it isn't written. Likewise, a film or a play aren't literature, but the script which was written to create the film or play is literature. Even audiobooks are not literature, even though the books which are read are literature. To this end, comics are not literature, though the text within the comic is.
This clear categorization helps make evaluations of literary works more clear and fair as well. By stripping away the non-literary components of a given work and only comparing the actual written work, we can more easily judge the expressivity (or other dimensions of value) of the words. A comic, for example, may be a wonderfully expressive piece of art while not being an expressive pieces of literature. A song, likewise, may be very moving and expressive because of the music or vocal performance, even if the lyrics themselves wouldn't stand on their own as poetry. Keeping the components separate allows us to compare the literary component of two works more objectively.
I have nothing but respect for a well-researched, source-citing expository analysis that turns out, ten minutes in, to have been the extended setup for a truly wretched pun.
Ya got me, sir - my hat's off to you.
I think what defines "literary" works is how they demand the audience engage with the text, and how much substance exists to engage with. some authors will do that by "talking fancy;" it allows them to use the complex devices (meter, vocabulary, metaphor) to discuss complex, thought provoking ideas. also, when a work is "difficult" it forces the audience to think and engage with the text, as you discussed. However, there are authors who will use simple language or even the vernacular to make thier work accessible and easier to engage with. the end of Whitman's song of myself comes to mind, especially as he addresses the reader directly ("listener up there! what have you to confide in me?...who wishes to walk with me/will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?" and "failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged/missing me one place search another/I stop somewhere waiting for you"). however, Whitman's ideas are still complex, even if his language is explicit and intentionally devoid of traditional literary devices. His work (and Twain's) was criticized by contempies for that reason, believing that literature must be scholarly and difficult.
we decide what qualifies as liturature now based not on the medium or language, but on the authors ability to engage. similar to tolstoys definition of good art, when a work successfully communicates an idea and withstands criticism, it becomes liturature. the more engaging the idea itself, AND the presentation (be it approachable or pretentious) make good liturature. it is also worth noting that the audience need not like the idea to appreciate it as literature. while I disagree with the existentialists and absurdists, I still love Becket and Camus (example of difficult works). As long as these ideas are thought provoking, regardless of our opinion of them, they will remain literature. Bob Dylan is a brilliant poet whose lyrics are engaging, thought provoking, and endurant.
You are on form today! Great job!
was the guy in the video een a bob dylan fan???? anyone who isnt familiar with dylans work listen to chnaging of the guards and its alright ma im only bleeding and desolation row and all along the watchtower. its peotry its storytelling the music is secondary to his words
I feel like you didn’t actually watch the video. He wasn’t questioning Dylan’s value, he was questioning the parameters of what Literature constitutes and how people perceive it.
If you performed a poem as a song, it wouldn't stop being a poem, would it?
Yes, Bob Dylan's works are literature, they're just also songs. Just because his works sit in the middle of the venn-diagram of music and words doesn't mean they're not either. While the nobel prize was originally just about books and poetry, in this case its also about things that are more than just that. If you read the lyrics of "Blowin' in The Wind," for example, it looks like a poem because it is one; it's just intended to be set to music because that increases its strength as a work.
Like most things, there's a huge gray area: what if a book with no words wins the prize? Does that count? A movie has words, can it win the prize? For both I think yes, but the argument is the Bob Dylan's works are squarely out of that zone. They use words as art, in conjunction with other things.
On this subject though, I think the definition of literature needs to be expanded so we can all include his work without argument. I'm thinking:
"A piece that employs the nature of language and/or activity to tell a story or make an argument over time."
This pretty much encompasses everything; a silent film uses activity such as facial expression or body language to imply a story; "the Jabberwocky" or Doctor Seuss uses what words sound like and how they read to express a story through gibberish; and a song or a regular movie still counts because they use at least one plus other techniques from other mediums.
Then a painting doesn't count, because while it may tell a story it does so in a single picture: there's no build up or release or character development. But if you get a collection of paintings you can get the equivalent of a graphic novel, and then it does count as literature. Because really, the only difference between those is whether they're binded in a book, and we're already agreed that doesn't count towards its nature as literature.
Any ideas?
from a practical standpoint, literature is easy to define: it is media that is typed or written down so that it can be both understood and enjoyed completely by reading (ether on paper or screen)
this should exclude lyrics to any song because the reading would only be part of the enjoyment experience (one currently can not simply 'read sounds')
this technically also excludes any play in script form (what would be a play that is never acted)
Collective works, sung lyrical verse, emotional connection/reaction, sustained popularity.
Beautiful and inspiring
thank you
Hello there, your account is great. I'm a literature student. For a project I thought of analyzing Bob Dylan's songs. Can you suggest the themes you find in his songs or the best lyrics from his songs. Thank you.
It was mentioned in passing, but this idea also reminds of a debate/discussion I've had with many friends: The artistic merit of video games. As the only gamer in my friend group I often speak on the artistry of games. Be it the actual art style or storytelling. Many of my friends scoff at the idea that a medium like games (a time wasting pursuit and symptom of kind of Peter Pan syndrome in their opinion) couldn't possibly have the same merit as literature or art. I think the song lyrics as literature is a the stone to fall from the wall that separates "my art" from "society-at-large's art."
Wikipedia defines literature as "...in its broadest sense, is any single body of written works. More restrictively, it is writing considered as an art form, or any single writing deemed to have artistic or intellectual value, often due to deploying language in ways that differ from ordinary usage." Which I like, because it justifies most arguments. Shakespeare is literature because, currently, we consider it art. If times changed and redefined art, Shakespeare may cease to be literature, because we would no longer consider it art. By the same logic, it's hard to argue that song lyrics aren't literature, since they are undoubtedly art and they are undoubtedly a clever and/or unusual use of language. I'd also like to point out that the use of language doesn't have to be complex (i.e. big words) it just has to be deep. Admittedly, I am very much a proponent of music as narrative, but that's not the point.
If it's not written it's not literature. Shakespeare published his plays in the First Folio. Lyrics/poetry and songs are fundamentally different mediums. Of course Dylan is published so that makes his work literature, not the fact that he sings stuff.
I would probably define literature as any work who's main focus is words, or in which words overwhelm other artistic aspects of the work. Personally I was a little surprised that you suggested science fiction is generally not seen as literature. I was raised on H.G. Wells, educated in Ray Bradbury, and grew to love Isaac Asimov. Regardless, however, I think that asking "what is literature" is akin to asking "what is art". The answer will invariably be "whatever the audience thinks is art." A beautifully constructed watch: art. A magnificently built building: art. An interesting arrangement of garbage on the floor: art. Intent, recognition, or functionality hardly matter.
I think an interesting aspect of Dylan is that he is often derided by the public despite his obvious and significant contributions to music, literature, philosophy, SCIENCE (which is kind of incredible). He is seen often as a talentless, credential-less, has been and I think that the reason why it appears to me that society has that perception is probably why his work is better seen as literature than other works by his peers. That reason being that he is a terrible singer. Think about other works of literature that were likely previously works of song. The Iliad, the Old Testament, and the epic of Gilgamesh were all likely sung but are now mostly known to us as literature. I would posit that this might have to do with the fact that they aren't really sung anymore and the main focus has become the words. Dylan's songs are not complex in rhythm, melody, or chord structure and his singing, while very recognizable, is hardly masterfully done. While all this can be grating on those with a more selective musical palette, it certainly brings the lyrics to the for front and those lyrics are.......masterful. I mean, my community college had a class that was entirely focused on Dylan's lyricism. Despite his mediocrities and critics and eccentricities Dylan has survived to be recorded over and over, to be quoted and paraphrased, and now chosen to live on as a symbol of our country and world history.
What about the idea of games as litterature?
Games like The Last of Us and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons have stories that could stand alone as works of litterature id say. The Last of Us has actually been used in upper secondary school in Norway. The class did a litterary analysis of the story. Also the Australian Writers' Guild gave out an award to a Skyrim mod.
www.kotaku.com.au/2016/10/an-australian-skyrim-mod-has-won-a-screenwriting-award/
What will it take to get some games to be viewed as litterature? Can something be litterature without any words displayed(a lot of words were probably used to develop it) like in Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons?
Each time I hear a particularly witty or meaningful phrase, it’s most likely from the Bible, Shakespeare or Bob Dylan.
“Wiggle wiggle”
- Bob Dylan
Isn't literally anything written literature?
Seriously though, this is basically the same question as "What constitutes art?". Personally I think anyone trying to exclude something because of personal preferences is being an elitist jerk.
If that were true, both your statement and this one would also be considered literature. But, I do not think a short statement is enough to be literature unless it is incredibly dense with information so as to be nearly self complete, or at least subjectively self complete. Literature needs to be this complex to facilitate intersubjectivity, as a single isolated statement could be proceeded or preceded in so many different ways that it is essentially contextless outside of the meanings in our heads. In this sense, there is still literature, but the literature exists in the discourse of ideas that the isolated statement is a part of. So, this statement nor is yours literature. But, there is literature surrounding the statements in both of our heads, and a chain of statements form bonds between them which binds them together as a literature as well.
I define literature as any written work of fiction or poetry that makes significant use of literary devices (foreshadowing, juxtaposition, metaphor, antithesis, etc). This would rule out UA-cam comments, philosophical writings, and stories written by a kindergarten author, among other things, while still keeping in works that most would consider literature.
To the above two, no, those are all nonsensical requirements. This comment is literature. It's just not "great" literature.
Michael Vipperman I don't really think that these requirements are nonsensical, close minded possibly (I would have replied to that other fellow's comment, but it's not showing up), but there are only three requirements: it has to be written, it has to be fictional, and has to use literary devices. I do think that there is a deference between a hastily written note that's tossed across the classroom and Don Quixote. What I use to define literature seems to be more open minded than whatever definition Michael was going off of at the beginning of the episode that for some reason ruled out the majority of sci-fi and fantasy, however.
It's worth considering that while we typically discuss literature have having to do with the quality of the written work, you could make a pretty good case that it's generally been more associated with the qualities of the people who read it, and write about it. It's basically just the term used for written works accepted by the social/academic elite as the "high art" of that field. Something is made literature not by any virtue of it's own, but by virtue of the fact that a particular group of people have decided it's of interest to them.
Literature is, essentially, any work generally approved of by the literati.
As everytime you talk about literature, great video
My mom is literature
because your mom gave birth to you and she reads you like a book
Going off on a tangent here: If I understand this correctly, Kidd and Castano stated that what I call "character empathy" is the foundation of what we call "literature." That is very interesting to me personally; I am a high-functioning autistic, and when I consider trying to tell people what that means I go for some very specific metaphors.
One of my favorite metaphors is the idea of body language being a foreign language. I usually start by defining the collective unconscious--not, as some people think, a shared subconscious hive mind, but instead as a psychological foundation slash blueprint. Our brains are all structured this and that way, so on a fundamental level we all have basically the same sorts of thoughts: This is Pain, that is Bright, walk by swinging legs, very very very basic. A guidebook to Being Human, in a way. However, one of the edge cases is Reading Others, and in the case of autism I think our guidebooks are... missing some pages of that final chapter.
This leads to a lack of natural empathy--note the word natural there! We're not monsters, we know other people feel things, but what others would consider obvious signals we will interpret as noise. Like an english-speaker in japan, or vice versa. How we deal with this lack of natural empathy varies--I personally had to take theater class and psychology before I could start interacting "normally" and even now I find talking face to face to be... as difficult as speaking a second language, honestly, hence the metaphor. I prefer the internet, where text and speech can be divorced from facial recognition.
Which brings me back to Character Empathy. I can attest quite strongly that fictional characters, both ones I read about and ones I write about, helped me understand these strange balding apes called humans. Because characters were... focused, condensed versions of people, I could explore from them as a starting point and begin to register why this and that was so and so. One particular relatively recent case was my participation in a tabletop role-playing game, where I was able to realize "Oh, so that's what finding out a loved one dies feels like for normals." (It felt very different for me in real life.)
Anyway, just an interesting outside view tangent on the conversation.
A story as a time when Shakepeare isn't a literature huh?
*The House At The HIll-Prologue*
I remember that day, I was crying.
Sobbing and weeping, I tried to wipe the tear off my face. But it just keep coming instead.
Disregarding the tear stain in my sleeve. Disregarding the backpack I've left as school. I ran back and up to the house at the hill in my hometown.
The house was baked in the setting sun back then, basking in it hue.
It have been demolished by now. And last time I remembered, it have been turned into some kind of villas housing.
"That's 10 years ago, sir. Right now the entire hill is turned into a literature house with your name on it."
Ah, is that so... Anyway still, I remembered it exactly like it was still yesterday...How did it look like...
"Do you need me to mind dive into your memories?"
Ah, no no, I could still describe it to you, word by word.... Oh right, it was a wide rectangular house, see-through as the front with door and window made of glass. Above is a slanted roof, with each of it tiles the colour of the sky.
"Slanted roof? Tiles?"
Oh right, house these day don't have that anymore... You see, back in the day, about a centuries or two, house stil have to be slanted in order to divert the rain out of the above. And as some point in the past, the roof have to be layered in small curved rectangular piece of flat rock called tiles, since they still can't make an entire roof and put it on the house yet...Or so I've heard from grandpa back then.
Now that I think about it, that house is really old by then. The glass was blurred with dust and wind, the paint on the house have been bleached white by the sun, and the roof have broken quite a few tiles...
But I digress.
Climbing at the hill and seeing the house in sight, I ran faster to and passed the door that's always open and hugged my grandpa who's busy ordering the book on the shelf.
" "Book"? That's mean..."
Yes, my grandpa own a bookstore, back then.
Nowaday, it's should be called a literature house. But bookstore is more accurate then. Comic, graphic novel, dictionary, novel, magazine,... my grandpa got it all.
"Your grandpa really is an amazing person."
Amazing is half of it. Unlike today, literature as word is an dying art, if not dead already.
"But it's thank to your effort, that we have rediscorvered the joy and wonder of it."
Ah yeah, I did do it.
"That's why I'm here sir."
Oh right...Anyway, where was I?
"The reason, sir."
Right...I was bullied.
It was a literature session as school. The teacher calling me up on board.
He was showing a picture of a dying man, being held by a woman, as he held a picture in his hand. He was asking what would the two said.
I was the first one going up, and wouldn't know what to said. So I said "I don't know".
The class then laugh as me.
"Why?"
Oh right, it was 80 years ago. Of course you wouldn't know.
Back then, it's kinda like now that we learn the words and languages instantly at birth.
Along with basic math, physics,biology,... we know everything we needed to know about science. So, at the matter of course, the school started teaching about art, sport and social study instead while we gradually remember all the stuff that have been implanted since birth.
Creativity is pretty much the most importance thing right then, so we first must learn how to guess the meaning as seemingly ordinary thing, or something along like that... So of course, not being able to do that is a stuff to mock about.
Back then, they would called me a "Reader".
"Reader? Why that would be an insult?"
Do you know what reader mean?
"The one who read book, right?...Oh"
You're quick to know. Since being able to read and write is a thing even a 2 years old would know, only being able to know something only by reading it is considered to be lazy, with a dumb brain that wouldn't think for itself unless it's read outloud to him. Some even take it further by saying that he must be increative because all the knowledge in his brain must have clogged up his mind already.
"..."
Hey, what's the look? Come on, let countinue.
So after being said all these this and that, I got embarassed and run straight out of the school and bawl against my grandpa's shirt with my tear and snot.
""Wow, time sure are different. Back in the day, meaning was fostered by word.""
""Hey Gramp, is it true ?"
""Sure it is... Hey, let me read you an example: Hamlet by Shakepeare.""
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky
With one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea
Circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate
Driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow
Some people forget that Literature was born with the music, and that's why Dylan's lyrics can be read, and should be listened to. I once wrote an essay about what if Bob Dylan deserved to win the Nobel? And I wrote "YES", I had so much fun, whereas writing that.
I think one of the major arguments here is what are song lyrics, just how much complexity and thought is needed to make something that is rhythmic and has structure poetry, instead of just a song. There's the famous example of how you can sing most of Emily Dickinson's poems - definitely poetry, but with a distinct musical quality, just like many of Yeats poems had. Is it a poem if it intends to be a poem, and just happens to be musical in nature?
Ultimately I think that there is a distinction, but not a clear line we can draw between the two. It's all art, but in the same way paintings are done in styles that are reminiscent of previous styles of painting, music has literary qualities, great song lyrics allude to poetry in the same way poetry often alludes to works of fiction and classical works.
I quite liked this episode, it was thought evoking and surprising.
Wow, so much to say about this. Great episode, in any case.
I get the feeling that there is a lot here that a "simple wittgensteinian approach", so to speak, would solve pretty quickly:
. Literature is what we _say_ (consistenly enough) is literature. No need to reach into how we feel or relate to it, how big the words are or how complex the structure is, how defamiliarizing or valuable it is..., just how we name it. All characteristics of literary works will emerge from that. This also bypasses the discussion of why we name something literature. We can go back to it, but there might be no need.
. Do we need a clearer, non-recursive definition? Ok then. Literature is art done with words; _written_ words if we want to be more restrictive, 'where words are central to the construction of the work' if we want to be less restrictive. This may still keep some comics technically out, but nothing we can't fine-tune later (like we do to consider _4'33"_ as music - which it definitely is). This is as good a "definition" as we're going to get, if a definition is what we're looking for at all. (I'd argue it's not, and I'd stick with the previous statement: we'll judge if something is literature on a case by case basis, not with pre-existing complete standards. "Being a work of literature" is an _emergent_ property.)
Also, about the research papers: mirror neurons! (+ theory of mind, ok) Lookitup, mirror neurons are ace.
This makes all the conclusions pointed in that part of the episode very very straightforward, and also ties them in with basically every recent study on how memory works and what purposes its "failings" serve (like being constantly rewritten, or being often indistinguishable from dreams or pure imagination). Fascinating topic.
Looking for a clear, objective reason for calling something literature seems, for all this, to be a bad strategy. What _can_ it achieve? What do we hope to find, a set of rules that we can then apply to everything in order to be sure, once and for all, in what box to put them? A way, with those clearly labeled boxes, to deal with the anxiety the previous uncertainty was apparently causing? Ehhhh... those don't sound like such great plans. Great slippery slopes, yes. Not so good as ways to build knowledge and understanding.
As a musicologist I'll talk as seriously as you want about any music you want, and I'll discuss with you why or how or in what context(s) such and such practices/sounds/objects are music. But I'm not going to give you a definition of music or present its essence in any way.
In short, yes. I don't think everything he has ever written amounts to literature. But when you stack up Blowing In The Wind, Masters of War, A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall, Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie, The Times They Are A-Changin', With God On Our Side, Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, Let Me Die In My Footsteps, Chimes of Freedom...and that's before he really got into gear...all of the stuff from 1965-6, the entire Blood On The Tracks album, his Chronicles Vol 1 book...not to mention a great deal of other things...yes. He captures something in all of us. He has a way, like Shakespeare, in capturing something about life that pretty much everyone can relate to at one time or another, at one level or another. His work is something borrowed, and something new. It's timeless. It puzzles, years after you hear it. You may not like his voice. You may think some of his music sounds terrible or boring. But for those who listen, yes. It's literature that stands with the best of any of them.
WHAT IS LITERATURE:lit·er·a·ture: written works, especially those considered of superior or lasting artistic merit.
leaflets and other printed matter used to advertise products or give advice
A literary critique is usually a value judgment, an attempt to manufacture a exclusive criteria for quality.
Bod Dylan's lyrics are fine poetry! So are literature...
Literature, when it's boiled down to its basics, is conceptual. If a load of letters spaced between each other make words that touch you in some way, that's literature. Nobel prizes aren't given to a bawdy limerick or a funny haiku. They're given to words that touch us in a way we're never usually touched. They expose more than our souls, they expose our characters. Literature is basically words that leave a mark on us. A memory or emotion that we could never verbalize...
Life itself is a work of art. All we need to do is recognize it.
Mike, have you read about Alex Ross (the music critic, not the comic book artist) "hating classical music"? His article about it raises very simmilar questions.
I would love more videos that ask "what is literature" 10 minutes is not enough to truly delve in! though I understand the purpose of starting a conversation...I want it continued..... c:
This reminds me of an argument that I had where people were saying that only certain things were art and I pointed out that if an artist picked up a twig at random and put it on exhibit it would be treated as art.
The moving finger having writ somehow becomes ‘ legit lit’.’ wordy Guthrie A.K.A Bobby D.
"The words, they do a brain thing" now permanently added to my standard repertoire of stock phrases.
This is amazing, cheers
At 9:40, on the top right you play a clip of another video I watched on UA-cam titled "Why Bob Dylan Won The Nobel Prize"
How about this: Stories illustrates the hopes and fears of person or a small group of people, Literature illustrates the hopes and fears of a culture/humanity. Shakespeare will always be literature because reading his work will always give us insight into the Elizabethan world and engender empathy with that world.
I've linked the last part of the video regarding the Overwatch fanart to the Overwatch subreddit; let's see how it goes :D
Hey !
I just love what you do
Cheers ;)
3:33 Yeah, I've got a good comment response!
8:45 Mike: Ceul Gai's comment response
are there any episodes of idea channel about vaporwave?
Dylan's words are enhanced through his unique musical phrasing, creating a deep literary experience.
It doesn't help that most examples used to show Dylan off definitely aren't his most lyrically genius. They're great, but they usually fail to show his true ability.
Like Blowin in the Wind and All Along The Watchtower aren't why he won, or why he matters in this context. Listen to "It's Alright I'm Only Bleeding", "Gates of Eden", and "Ballad of a Thin Man" to see why Dylan is special and his own thing in music. And this is just from a small sliver of his career, a few months.
At first all I could do when I heard about the Nobel was laugh, but now I think I've come around to it. Not because I'm a fan of Bob Dylan or anything (I'm not, really), but because "literature" isn't and shouldn't be something with fixed definition: it's something in progress. And when we look at some of the crazy experimentation done by modernists and postmodernists-Gertrude Stein writing "poems" in Tender Buttons, Aime Cesare's "poems" with an imagism so literal it trumps e.e. cummings, whatever the hell Roland Barthes was doing in Roland Barthes, Finnegans Wake, etc-it becomes ludicrous to make hard-and-fast distinctions between genres. The fluidity of art is its beauty.
"He's Lit Fam" needs to be a shirt.
What I find a compelling argumentis that each sufficiently literary novel, each character and each paragraph and each word* has it's own Whorfianist effect on the user of and the receiver of those things.
For example, let's say that a friend of ours saw Inception on his own last year and this has awakened his interest in challenging movies. We go to see Interstellar and when we have a beer afterwards, we talk about it. And, this hypothetically movie-illiterate friend ends each sentence with, "like-Inception-yunno?". He says this about the special effects, about the meaning of the movie, about the twists, about the science, about the relationship about the characters.
We know that Interstellar isn't a lot like Inception at all, but our friend uses Inception as a word to explain how much he likes Interstellar. And, if you don't immediately reject him, you can see, yeah, it's understandable that he feels the movies are similar. If we put ourselves in the mind of the speaker and his context within the literary landscape, we gain in language.
That is what Whorfianism is to me and what literacy and literature is. Uses of language that becomes a second, intertextual language on itself within the literary landscape.
His lyrics have had more of an impact in the last 57 years than all the American poets who came before him-COMBINED!
Shakespeare wasn't literature when it was written. Any SciFi world where people get vast quantities of knowledge 'downloaded' into their brain as part of their education might make Shakespeare non-literary. Imagine if the history information downloaded was so detailed that reading shakespeare you'd be able to read its early modern english as easily as you read current english and you get all its outdated references and jokes as easily as a scholar who'd dedicated his life to understanding the period.
To such a SciFi person, Shakespeare's works might be great plays but probably not literature.
If I ever had to write a scifi novel focussed on what such extreme learning would do to the experience of literature and reading I'd probably call it "Resurrection of the author". I'll show myself out now.
TheTrueRandomness Interesting. Are well-respected modern plays not literature, then?
My point was less about the fact that they were new at the time but that if you understand Early Modern English and enough Elizabethan culture to know slang from 400 years ago you'll not only find a ton of really dirty jokes but with all that context you'd also see them in their gaudy 'pop culture' form rather than the 'fancy literature' that they were *made* into in later years. They'd no doubt still be some of the best plays you'd ever read/watch but it's like hearing a foreign language song that sounds really beautiful until you realise that the lyrics are actually encouraging genocide - the knowledge about the author's intentions will take something away from your experience, which is why I've dubbed the concept "The resurrection of the author" ;)
Does the fact that Shakespeare's works have endured lend them any gravitas? There were contemporary playwrights who've all but been forgotten, not to mention those who preceded and many many more who've followed. When our progeny are able to easily digest and understand the context as you put it, perhaps they'll also be able to quickly and comprehensibly compare his works to thousands of other's and easily determine if and why his should or should not be held in high regard. My buddies and I can crack each other up with some very inappropriate jokes, but Dave Chappelle raises inappropriate humor to an art form. Is it possible that Shakespeare's writing is revered because it should be?
Shakespeare is really interesting in this regard, the French refused him as worthwhile for a long time, and mocked the British obsession with him. At the same while, what the British thought were the best plays changed often. Now we consider Romeo and Juliette, Macbeth, and Hamlet as the big plays, but a hundred or so years ago the plays with massive amounts of pageantry were far more likely to be performed and lauded. We changed as a literary audience, and that interests me greatly.
Something can dip in and out of literature based on the whims of the market. In this case it is Shakespeare.
I would have to ask one of my teachers about the origin of term of literature, because I'm kind of lazy to look it up, but I do think that when it was invented, there was a clear distinction of what was literature and what wasn't, due to the fact that, for most part of history, only a few literary genres would exist at a time. When a new era ushered in new genres, most of the already existing genres would progressively become forgotten. Being that there were only a few pertinent genres, those would be considered literature, as opposed to the writtens that had endured over the years because of their practical use (religion, law, etc.)
With the invention and progress of printing, given pieces of literature would endure through time and new writers would be influenced by, not only by current popular ideas, but also anything they would have read, making individuality and innovation more common and creating a lot of different genres, all part of what is called "literature".
Most of what I have written is hypothesis, except for the fact that the number of literary genres being written (I should say created, because most of early literature wasn't written) in a specific time period is pretty low, and it would stay like that until the end of the Middle Ages/beginning of the Renaissance. That leads me to think that the term literature, which would cover only a few genres at a time in the public discourse, now covers so many genres that it's pretty much useless. Prizes for more restricted groups which can be given a common point of comparison are therefore much more sensible than prizes that are attributed to a single work throughout something as broad as literature.
Also, people are now having this discussion because a song received a Nobel prize in literature, but nobody says anything about drama being compared to novels. Do people think that literature only applies to what is read? Plays are experienced fully when seen, not read, and ancient music is now read by scholars (Middle Ages "poems" were written as songs), so that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
SilvaGunner is literature confirmed.
A wonderful video, cover all sides, including my own favorite types of formalism. It's worth noting, though, that Eagleton's newer work seems to override his earlier vision of literature as a socio-functional expression of cultural status and "the assumptions by which certain groups exercise and maintain power over others."
HOW TO READ LITERATURE (2014) asserts that "literature" is not just an effect of reading or an expression of interests and power. Literary reading is often "demanded" by the rhetoric of the artwork -- a demand for "a particularly vigilant kind of reading, one which is alert to tone, mood, pace, genre, syntax, grammar texture, rhythm, narrative structure, punctuation, ambiguity -- indeed everything that comes under the heading of form."
In a sense, literature is partly determined by (and as) a form that repays the effort of the reading.
For my money, Bob Dylan's lyrics don't do that. But that's a different argument.
7:06 Missed opportunity for a Varrick gif there.
"And to some extent even UA-camrs, who can become real celebrities rather than just internet famous."
That one sentence sounds like a whole episode of Idea Channel and also there were a lot of *necessary* air quotes that you didn't even add with the use of emphasis. I fear for your well being should someone internet famous hear this blasphemy.
But really, "internet famous" vs "real celebrity." I don't think you've talked about this yet but I would love to hear your thoughts.
You could argue that literature never dies, it just changes form to better fit the language and issues of the time in which it is written. Even people who've never read the 'original literature' have likely encountered it, especially Shakespeare. (The Lion King is Hamlet, She's The Man is Twelfth Night, 10 Things I Hate About You is The Taming of the Shrew). Older literature also informs new work in less direct ways, and so the influence associated with literature status is actually very difficult to lose. I think literature is a work that asks us about or reflects back to us a part of ourselves that we don't for any number of reasons necessarily engage with on a daily basis- and in many cases those questions and parts of ourselves don't go away, they just are made differently in an attempt to make sense of them (or as much as can be made). If music lyrics helps you to think of and engage with those questions, I don't see why it wouldn't be literature.
The Pulitzer for Art Spiegelman's MAUS was not controversial, either for it being "comics" or for it being indeterminately fiction or non-fiction. It was uncontroversial, in part, because it was given not a regular Pulitzer, but a "special award" for select not-quite-literature things. Like Dylan, who won a similar "special citation" in 2008.
The thing with literature is that anything can be read as literature. It's the will to consider something as literary that makes it literary. So, when it comes to this "essence" that texts could potentially have, you end up realising that it's not there. The text is nothing but mere words. And here comes the reception theory, it's what one individual can contribute to the text that makes it complete. In a sense, you have to think of the text as an empty container and we, the readers, fill it with meaning. What we can contribute is completely determined by cultural values and that's why something can be read as literature, because we are reading it as members of a specific moment in society in which said text has the characteristics to resonate with our conceptions of what has been said that literature is. Basically, we are manifestations, agents of sorts, that filter texts according to the notions our society has of literature.
With all of this in mind, the question is not whether Bob Dylan's work can be considered as literature, but actually, why is it considered now literature? What are the motives behind the statement? Does Bob Dylan need the Nobel Prize of Literature or is it the other way around? The questions raised by this award are many, yet it is kind of refreshing to see how the Academy is redefining itself and accepting more ways of literature. Who knows, maybe Stan Lee or Alan Moore will win the award in the coming years!
Some of my favourite authors and poets are primarily musicians; Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits and yes, Bob Dylan.
The only two requirements for something being literature I can see are, that it has to consist of words and that it has to be about the relationship of those words with each other (in meaning as well as in sound). The latter may sound a bit confusing, so let me explain it by comparing it to music; Music emerges from a succession of sounds having a *relationship*: Rythm, melody, harmony are the result of this. Likewise you could cobble together words based in how they sound, but if they don´t combine to any meaning, it´s not literature. On the other hand, you can´t write a text, without the words also having an aesthetical relationship. Literature is simply the result of how a text´s sound and meaning *combine* for you.
Beyond this basic technical defintion, literature is also *about* anything, that people *feel* it´s about. Anyone´s history with literary works and hearing about literature makes up their understanding of it. Similar experiences may also be shared by groups of people, so that they think the word actually "means", what their group thinks it means. But actually it means the same for everybody and is also *about" that more particular kind of meaning for the group. For example, a group of literary critics may associate a mark of quality with the word literature.
Long time listener, first time caller - While I really enjoyed this discussion of the nature of the term "Literature" (and I love IDEA Channel generally), it seems to me the video misses one of the larger questions related to the issue of Dylan winning the Nobel Prize for Literature: what is the Nobel Prize for Literature meant to reward? Given that the winner last year was Svetlana Alexievich (a journalist and writer of non-fiction prose) and past winners have included Jean-Paul Sartre (who was largely being recognized for his philosophical work) and Bertrand Russell (also a philosopher), it seems short sighted to assume that we are talking about a prize given for big "L" Literature. I know absolutely nothing about the Swedish language, but I would assume that their is a solid possibility that "litteratur" (the Swedish term used in the name of the prize) may have shades of meaning that "literature" in English lacks. I would suggest that the history of the prize implies that it is an award for achievement in what would traditionally in English by called "letters" and I would say that songwriting constitutes a type of word-smithing worthy of acknowledgement.
I feel like it's worth noting that a lot of the challenge, at least in the circles that I have read from, were not merely about the premise of a singer-songwriter such as Dylan having his corpus considered 'literature'. His work is deserving from a lyrical perspective, at least to me, delivery mechanisms such as music shift our viewpoint on the notion of verse as a literary endeavour contrary to prose, and his work as a result is widening of Americana in a way that is worthy not only of some manner of plaudit, but of wide reading and appreciation.
But a lot of the commentary has always been, as you said in the video, about the fact that "value can't be divorced from those who hold it". Consider the premise that music as oral tradition, as sense-history, is particularly tied to the actual intent of a lot of forms, in ways that it isn't to a lot of other musical genres. One would hesitate to argue, for instance, that mainstream pop documents the American lifestyle as intently as folk music does (although pop music does indeed still _inadvertently_ be so documentary, which means that it shouldn't be cast out as literature, so the ouroboros consumes this part of my comment--CARRYING ON). But in the same way that we would argue folk music's cultural intent, other genres like hip-hop do similarly; and even in genres like folk and its predecessors, there are myriad voices in the canon, especially voices responsible for indelibly shaping those musical landscapes, that are not considered with the same fervour as Dylan.
If value can't be divorced from the people who wield value over a canon, then it is fair to ask the question of whether certain voices are valued _even when value shifts_ within the canon. That means, on the surface, a lot of people went, "why is it that when the system shifts to value songwriting not just as literature, but as Literature™, it goes straight for Dylan?" How long would it take, for a lark, for Sam Cooke to be Literature™? Would the calypso corpus of Trinidadian singer Slinger Francisco, also known as The Mighty Sparrow, be considered Literature™? How long, even, would it take someone of more recent folk performance, like Anaïs Mitchell, whose work is dense and contains a folk opera so well-crafted it's been adapted for the stage, to be considered Literature™?
When we discuss the value over a canon, we don't discuss enough how social powers make that distinction. It's the split, for a comparison, between The Canon™ valuing the dialect of _Trainspotting_ more favourably as a work of literature than they do Caribbean dialects in prose literature. So it isn't just about "why music?" to some. It is also, "if music, then why _now_, why _Dylan_, and _how long_ can one reasonably expect for music from elsewhere in the world or from marginalized and underrepresented communities with equally critical content to be valued similarly as Literature™ worthy of wide, deep engagement from the literary public?"
Did anyone else's inner Leslie Knope grimace at every mention of "Eagleton?"
If I were an English instructor at a secondary school, I would eliminate the concept of a "book" report in favor of the "story" report.
The point of the exercise is to establish that thinking critically about a narrative -- not just thinking strictly about its structure but thinking quizzically about its premises and theses -- is a thing that should be done. Not everyone is motivated to read, but, certainly, nearly everyone is exposed to stories -- songs; religion; movies; video games; oral histories, personal or ancestral; even things that could only be called a "story" in the loosest sense which still conjure vast meaning to the recipient (a painting, sculpture, natural wonder, etc.) -- and these external narratives invariably shape our own internal narratives; and, without critical insight, we do not have a way to make the shaping of our internal narratives less chaotic.
The point isn't to think critically about books or the English language; the point is to think critically about stories and how they affect us, which isn't something I really picked up on until I was about 26.
If I were to go back and re-read these assigned books in light of this new knowledge, I probably would still find "A Separate Peace", "The Pearl", and "Red Badge of Courage" to be awful and insipid, but I might actually gain something useful from it.
However, as this hypothetical teacher, you still need to tell me a) what the story was about, and b) how it affected your internal narrative (or how it didn't, and why) to receive full marks.
Hey, that's a Dutch book on the cover!
Shakespeare's body of work is mainly plays. There's also his poetry, but let's put that aside. The scripts to his plays are that, scripts. Do we consider movie scripts to be literature? Is something that isn't meant to be read, but more a blue print to a performance, the art in and of itself? Is the screenplay to "Back to the Future" worthy of a literary award?
The way people consume Shakespeare's work has changed since it was first written. Sure we still perform his plays, but many people experience it primarily as a written work. While this was possible during his life time, many of the definitive versions were printed posthumously. Many more people were illiterate during this time. The purpose of the publishing may have been more for performance of plays than to be read as an actual piece of art in itself.
Can this be considered literature, sure. The way it's consumed today would suggest that it belongs in that category. But I think there are sound arguments against including it. Is Bob Dylan's song lyrics literature? I think that's fine, they are words that have had a profound effect on many people's lives. Literature is as much about the social context we give the art, as the medium that it is delivered in.
"Somebody please write a dystopian sci-fi novel where the central premise is that Shakespeare is no longer considered literature."
I would, but I don't think I'm gunna do much better than Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" that's pretty much exactly that.
Lyrics CAN be literature. In a VERY broad sense, Chinese people treat some 1000-year-old lyrics as literature. Some of them even can be sung today under different music. Yes, I'm talking about "Ci" (詞/词) in Song Dynasty; this Chinese word originally means "lyrics", and now is referred to all this kind of literature creations that have a set of formal pattern that has relation to certain musics at the time.
Just a side note, those ancient lyric that can be sung today is this album:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandan_youqing
I for one had always considered literature to just be written words, or maybe with some reflection written words with an intended audience greater than another.
Literature plus song? No. Having the lyrics sung not just adds another layer of meaning and form, it actually changes the entire work of art, it changes its aesthetic qualities a great deal. It becomes something else. Dylan's music is not just sung lyrics plus instrumental part. When you expose yourself to it, you do not perceive it by its parts, you take in the whole thing, the way all of its separate parts work together. This is the aesthetic experience that should be subjected to analysis.