When Bob Dylan was crowned with the laurel wreath of Nobel recognition in literature last year, the internet got het up. Rumors of Dylan's shortlisting by the committee have swirled every year since 1996 but often were dismissed as pipe dreams. Permanent secretary for the Swedish Academy Sara Danius defended the win, comparing Dylan to Sappho and Homer and arguing that poetry and song were once conjoined—in fact, Homeric and Sapphic songs pre-date the concept of literature altogether, and only became defined by the written word after they'd survived long enough through oral transmission.
Viewed from 2017, Dylan's work is of a different time: of vinyl and print press. Still, an interest in canonizing him isn't anything new. Christopher Ricks's 2003 book Dylan's Visions Of Sin presents a zealous case for Dylan's printed lyrics being as poetical as the work of John Keats; the inclusion of some of Dylan's lyrics in The Norton Anthology of Poetry and The Oxford Book of American Poetry, alongside the publication of his Complete Lyrics, have further ensured his ubiquity in English departments everywhere.
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