BREAKING 2016 #NobelPrize in Literature to Bob Dylan “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition” pic.twitter.com/XYkeJKRfhv
— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 13, 2016
Bob Dylan becomes the 108th Nobel Prize Winner in Literature!
You can watch the announcement here live:
(The announcement itself is in Swedish, but the crowd’s reaction at around :50 is rather priceless)
This is actually a pretty radical decision for the Nobel Prize people—the award has, rather famously, not gone to American authors, traditionally speaking (the last American to win was Toni Morrison in 1993), and Bob Dylan is not strictly a novelist, or a poet, or a short-story writer, which are typically the kind of writers that the Nobel favors. Instead, they recognized his radical additions to American song-writing and poetry, comparing Dylan to Homer or Sappho, whose works were composed to be performed orally. In giving the award to Dylan, whose birth name is Robert Allen Zimmerman, the Nobel also seems to be attempting to bridge a theoretically and cultural gap between “high literature” and “commercial literature”; in other words, they want this award to mean something to everyone, a goal in which they certainly succeeded by choosing a man whose music has meant so much to so many for the past forty years. As the Academy noted: “Since the late 1980s, Bob Dylan has toured persistently, an undertaking called the ‘Never-Ending Tour.’ Dylan has the status of an icon. His influence on contemporary music is profound, and he is the object of a steady stream of secondary literature.”
Mr. Dylan’s other awards include Grammy, Academy and Golden Globe awards, as well as an induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.
When asked to recommend a work to introduce new listeners to Bob Dylan’s work, Sara Danius, the Swedish Academy’s permanent secretary and a professor in literature at Stockholm University, recommended his 1966 album “Blonde on Blonde,” saying it contained “many examples of his brilliant way of rhyming and putting together refrains and his pictorial thinking.”
We couldn’t agree more, but feel free to come into the Library and check out some other selections from America’s newest Nobel Prize Winner!
Prof Seamus Perry of @engfac on Bob Dylan winning @NobelPrize for Literature pic.twitter.com/khaoIZuLd2
— University of Oxford (@UniofOxford) October 13, 2016