Poets and themes within Bob Dylan’s work

This page is an index to some of our articles that relate Dylan’s work to other writers, and to specific themes.

You may also find the following articles of interest:

Auden WH:  The Three Penny Opera: Bob Dylan And WH Auden.

Baudelaire, Charles: The Ghosts Of Electricity: Bob Dylan And Symbolism

Brecht, Bertolt  & Kurt Weill

Blake, William.

Breton, Andre: Bob Dylan And Andre Breton

Bremser, Ray: Bob Dylan And Ray Bremser : Post-Modernism

Browning, Robert: The Browning Of The Green Mountain

Buckley, Lord:  Bob Dylan And Lord Buckley

Burns, Robert: Bob Dylan And William Carlos Williams

Lord Byron:  

Catallus: Bob Dylan and Catullus: Greek and Roman Mythology

Cervantes, Miguel de

Chaucer, Geoffrey.  

Cohen, Leonard: Source Of Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts (Part III)

Coleridge, Samuel.

Conrad, Joseph: Bob Dylan And The Heart Of Darkness

Corso, Gregory: Bob Dylan And Gregory Corso: The Owl Of Minerva And The Skylark

Crane, Hart: Hart Crane: The Hart Of The Matter

Crane, Stephen:  Bob Dylan and Stephen Crane

Cummings, Edward: Bob Dylan and Edward Cummings: The Romantic Revival

Donne, John: Literary Allusions ll

Ducasse, Lucien: Bob Dylan And Lucien Ducasse: The Maldoror

Emily Dickinson: My Ruth’s In The Highlands

Eliot, TS.  TS Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Bob Dylan Fighting In The Captain’s Tower

Ferlinghetti, Lawrence:   Bob Dylan And Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Fitzgerald, F Scott: Bob Dylan And F Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby and Summer Days

Freud, Sigmund.  You Can Be My Dream If I Can Be In Yours: Bob Dylan Meets Dr. Freud

Frost, Robert

Allen Ginsberg:

Graves, Roberts.  The Great White Wonder: Bob Dylan And Robert Graves

Hanagid, Shmuel

Nathaniel Hawthorne Bob Dylan And Henry Longfellow

Hood, Thomas.  Bob Dylan: Feelings Have Changed

Hughes, Langston.  Bob Dylan And Walt Whitman: Writing In The Captain’s Tower

Joyce, James: 

Keats, John

Khayyam, Omar:

Kipling, Rudyard     Bob Dylan And Rudyard Kipling: The God Of Deliverance, The God Of Forgiveness, And The Law Of The Jungle

Lindsay, Vachel: Bob Dylan And The Beat Poetry Of Vachel Lindsay

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth:

MacLeish, Archibald

Melville, Herman: Gnosticism: Bob Dylan: Mixed-Up Confusion

Millay Edna : Time Out Of Mind: Bob Dylan Paints His Masterpiece

Milton, John: Bob Dylan: Feelings Have Changed

Nietzsche Frederich: Literary Allusions I

Ovid:

Charles Perrault (1628-1703)

Poe, Edgar Allan:

Porter, Cole: Bob Dylan And Cole Porter

Pound, Ezra.

Ransom, John Crowe

Rilke, Rainer

Rimbaud, Arthur.

Sandburg, Carl

Shakespeare, William.  Shakespeare’s In The Well With His Pointed Claws And His Bell

Shelly, Percy.

Smart, Elizabeth: Bob Dylan: Songs Of Alchemy

Sigourney, Lydia: Bob Dylan And Henry Longfellow, Part II

Spenser, Edmund

Stevens, Wallace.  Charles Swinburne, Wallace Stevens, And The Jack Of Hearts

Swedenborg Emanuel  The Browning Of The Green Mountain: Bob Dylan Visits Swedenborg

Swinburne, Charles Charles Swinburne, Wallace Stevens, And The Jack Of Hearts

Lord Tennyson:

Thomas, Dylan.

Timrod, Henry: Bob Dylan And Henry Timrod: The Country Coleridge Rambles

Tolkien RR: Literary Allusions l

Verlaine, Paul

Villon, Francois: Things have changed or have they?

Virgil: Virgil: Dylan And Aeneas: The Greatest Troy Ever Sold

Whitman, Walt:  Bob Dylan And Walt Whitman: Writing In The Captain’s Tower

Williams, Tennessee:  Bob Dylan And Tennessee Williams

John Whittier : Dylan’s Other Speech

Williams, William Carlos

Wordsworth, William My Ruth’s In The Highlands

Yeats, William: 

And in terms of movements and themes

BOB DYLAN AND GNOSTICISM

Accuracy: Bob Dylan’s Julius and Ethel: the accuracy of the story is not the point.

American Gothic: Bob Dylan Introduces American Gothic To Folk Rock

Broken Hearts: Bob Dylan’s Broken Hearts Club: a review of Blood on the Tracks

The Circus: Bob Dylan Under The Big Top: The Clown Of Thorns

Darkness: Bob Dylan And The Heart Of Darkness

Moving on:  Bob Dylan’s endless need to keep leaving, keep wandering and just keep moving on.

PaintersBob Dylan And Bottichelli, DaVinci, Delacroix, Duchamp, Picasso and Van Gogh

Religion: Bob Dylan’s Messiah: Songs Of Light And Darkness

Robin Hood: The Arrows They Are A-Flyin’: Bob Dylan Disguised As Robin Hood

Symbolism.  The Ghosts Of Electricity: Bob Dylan And Symbolism

Time: Time Passes Quickly: Bob Dylan and his eternal fight against time

Women: My Ruth’s In The Highlands A-Chaffing The Corn: Dylan’s Idealization of Women.


What is on the site

1: Over 400 reviews of Dylan songs.  There is an index to these in alphabetical order below on this page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.  Also a list of the most read articles on this site.

2: The Chronology.  We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums.  The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site.  We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year.     The index to the chronologies is here.

3: Bob Dylan’s themes.  We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions.  There is an index here.

4:   The Discussion Group    We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook.  Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link 

5:  Bob Dylan’s creativity.   We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further.  The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.

6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines

And please do note   The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews.