Abstract
Charles O. Hartman’s chapter is primarily concerned with “Dylan’s Deixis.” By offering a careful analysis of deixis in Dylan’s song-writing, Hartman ties that song-writing to a poetic tradition that Dylan both embraces and disregards. This chapter, to appropriate the author’s felicitous expression, sorts through the sometimes-fugitive operations of deixis in Dylan’s songs. Hartman carefully establishes “the core but easily overlooked operation of language called deixis” which “Dylan’s song lyrics have in common with the traditions and concerns of poetry in the usual, narrow sense.” Throughout this chapter, Hartman offers remarkable examples of “how Dylan uses deixis to create character and setting, draws parallels with how poets use it, and points out the ethical work that these manipulations enable.”
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Notes
- 1.
Among those who have occasion to speak this word, there seems to be difference about its first vowel; it rhymes with either “makes us” or “likes us,” apparently with an American preference for the latter and British for the former. It derives from a Greek word meaning “reference” or “pointing.” The OED says it entered English as a noun in 1949, though the adjective “deictic” goes back to technical texts in philosophy and rhetoric as early as 1828.
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Hartman, C.O. (2019). Dylan’s Deixis. In: Otiono, N., Toth, J. (eds) Polyvocal Bob Dylan. Palgrave Studies in Music and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17042-4_3
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