Bob Dylan has been awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in literature for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”
Some people are a bit thrown by the decision since Bob is a musician, but Sara Danius the Swedish Academy’s permanent secretary compared his work in the arts to that of the ancient Greek poets.
“If you look back, far back, 2,500 years or so, you discover Homer and Sappho and they wrote poetic texts that were meant to be listened to, that were meant to be performed, often with instruments — and it’s the same way with Bob Dylan.”
Throughout his career Bob has been awarded 10 Grammy Awards, one Golden Globe one Academy Award, a Pulitzer Prize special citation for “his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power,” and in 2012 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
He is the first American to win the Nobel Prize in literature since the author Toni Morrison in 1993, and he is the 108th winner overall. When asked if the parameters of the award were being broadened Sara responded with a reference to one of Bob’s songs.
“The times they are a changing, perhaps.”