Bob Dylan

Richard Marggraf Turley (Aberystwyth University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

Born 24 May 1941
Activity 1961-ongoing

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States; United Kingdom

Cultural Identities

Jewish American

Activities

Primary

Autobiographer
Singer
Song-writer

Resources

Dylan's Works

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Bob Dylan is unquestionably the most important songwriter of the twentieth century. An artist of uncompromising originality, his work has exerted an artistic and intellectual influence that goes far beyond the world of popular entertainment.

Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman on 24 May 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota, USA. He spent his childhood in Hibbing, a Minnesotan mining town on the shores of Lake Superior. Dylan later remarked of it: “There was really nothing there”. Listening avidly to radio music transmitted from New Orleans and playing in numerous local bands, the teenage Dylan familiarized himself with the country, blues and rock‘n’roll styles that would inflect his own compositions from the 1960s to the present-day. In 1959, Dylan enrolled at the University of Minnesota.

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2473 words

Citation: Marggraf Turley, Richard. "Bob Dylan". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 15 June 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1373, accessed 25 November 2024.]