Bob Dylan: Narrazione dell''Umanesimo paranoide americano' = Bob Dylan: Narration of American paranoid Humanism

Abstract

Aiming to review Bob Dylan’s poetics discussing it outside its traditional interpretative paths — which use to interpret his poetry as a brilliant literary form of political commitment, the present video-essay argues that Dylan’s lyrical production has to be interpreted as individualistic and universalistic, rather than as communitarian and ideological. What is claimed is that in the twentieth century, in the United States, cultural conditions were created that were completely similar to those of Italian Renaissance humanism. However, what is here called ‘the Paranoid, American Humanism’, does not aspire to the harmony of forms, but to their corruption, determined by the paranoid influence of the religious precepts introduced by the Pilgrim Fathers. It will be argued that Dylan, as well as the greatest American narrators of the mid-twentieth century, have debunked the great American narratives through such groundbreaking form of pop humanism.