Read and watch - Bob Dylan wins the Nobel Prize in Literature

In one of the most controversial announcements in the history of the venerable Nobel institution, American songwriter, singer and performer Bob Dylan was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize on Oct. 13th.

Reactions to the award have been passionately split, revealing a topical yet somewhat eternal debate on the boundaries of literature: is literature confined to book pages or are words meant to be expressed, in a variety of forms including oral performance?

Here are some of the multiple articles delving into the controversy from both sides:

The Guardian - Why Dylan deserves his Nobel literature win

The New York Times (op-ed) - Why Bob Dylan shouldn't have gotten a Nobel

The New York Times (video) - Bob Dylan and his poetic gift

The Guardian - Pop lyrics aren't literature? Tell that to Nobel prize winner Bob Dylan

The New York Times - Bob Dylan Wins Nobel Prize, Redefining Boundaries of Literature

In French: Le Monde (guest author) - "Il n'existe pas d'arts mineurs ou majeurs"

Finally, watch, listen and read Dylan's texts (official website) and make up your own mind:

THE 1960s

Mr Tambourine Man (1965)

One of Dylan's most popular successes, borrowing from both Surrealistic and biblical imagery, and aligning the singer-songwriter with a Rimbaud-like poetic persona.

It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) (1965)

Dylan declaims his stream-of-consciousness lyrics in a riveting, incantatory monotone, likely influenced by Beat poetry readings, and perhaps by the “sprechsang” style of singers in Bertolt Brecht’s plays.

A Hard Rains' a-Gonna Fall (1962)

The opening, questioning lines are likely taken from the traditional Scottish ballad “Lord Randall”, but the verses, in the form of replies, are Dylan’s own creation. Both the meter of these lines and the brutality of their imagery may owe something to French symbolist poetry (particularly Rimbaud’s “Drunken Boat”), and the enumeration of specific numbers of bizarre things the narrator has encountered on his journeys brings Biblical language to mind.

Blowin' in the Wind (1962)

The melody for this song is loosely based on the African-American gospel song “No More Auction Block.” Dylan took fragments from the spiritual, but fashioned completely new lyrics, and added his own chorus (“the answer my friend”).

Gates of Eden (1965)

The title is said to be a reference to William Blake’s “The Gates of Paradise” (1793), a reflection of the increasing influence of poetry on Dylan’s work of this period. In this and similar works, Dylan may also have been inspired by the cut-up technique of Beat writer William Burroughs, in which texts are cut apart and the words rearranged randomly to evoke new meanings.

Like a Rolling Stone (1965)

One of the most influential compositions in postwar popular music, originally written as an extended piece of blank verse by Dylan who then experimented with prose and poetry writing.

The Times They Are a-Changin' (1964)

This hymn to social and political revolution is iconic of the 1960s. It is believed to be one of several Dylan works that derive from an old hymn called “Deliverance Will Come,” also known as “Palms of Victory.”

Subterranean Homesick Blues (1965)

Notice Beat leading poet Allen Ginsberg lurking in the corner!

LATER PERIOD

Tangled Up In Blue (1975)

For this more pictural theme, Dylan was influenced by his recent study of painting and the Cubist movement. The song has been described as "A truly extraordinary epic of the personal, an unreliable narrative carved out of shifting memories like a five-and-a-half-minute musical Proust."

or "An abstract narrative of relationships told in an amorphous blend of first and third person, rolling past, present and future together, spilling out in tripping cadences and audacious internal rhymes, ripe with sharply turned images and observations and filled with a painfully desperate longing." (The Telegraph, 2013).

Shelter from the Storm (1975)

Jokerman (1983)

Sources: “Chronicles, Volume One,” by Bob Dylan; “The Formative Dylan: Transmission and Stylistic Influences, 1961-1963,” by Todd Harvey; “Bob Dylan in America,” by Sean Wilentz; “No Direction Home,” by Robert Shelton; “A Darker Shade of Pale,” by Wilfrid Mellers; “Bob Dylan, The Essential Interviews,” edited by Jonathan Cott; “Folk City: New York and the American Folk Music Revival,” by Stephen Petrus and Ronald D. Cohen; “Bob Dylan: All the Songs,” by Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon; “Highway 61 Revisited,” by Mark Polizzotti. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/14/arts/music/bob-dylan-influences-playlist-spotify.html?mabReward=A5