April 23, 2004

Masked and Explicated: Bob Dylan and His Tenured Disciples

By DAVID YAFFE

I don't like to think of myself in the highfalutin area," Bob Dylan once said. "I'm in the burlesque area."

Despite that claim, academe is recognizing that Dylan's cultural impact is no joke. Throw a rock at a convention of the Modern Language Association or the American Historical Association (and I can't imagine why anyone would be tempted), and you'll hit a Dylanologist, that species of rarefied rocker who can parse the distinctions among a dozen bootlegged versions of "Tangled Up

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