Chapter 1, Rock and Romanticism, Lexington Books

Order the book from the publisher’s website.

Chapter 1 of Rock and Romanticism: Blake, Wordsworth, and Rock from Dylan to U2 is Luke Walker’s “Tangled Up in Blake: The Triangular Relationship among Dylan, Blake, and the Beats,” pp. 1-18. Luke Walker is Visiting Lecturer at the University of Roehampton.

Luke Walker’s “Tangled Up in Blake: The Triangular Relationship among Dylan, Blake, and the Beats” surveys the history of Blake’s influence on Dylan and Dylan’s borrowing, acknowledged or not, of Blake over the course of Dylan’s career. Explaining Dylan’s reticence to acknowledge Blake in the light of accusations of plagiarism or the attempt to reduce Dylan to his sources, Walker engages in careful groundwork designed to isolate and explain the various sources by which Dylan may have come to be influenced by Blake in the 1960s, an influence that resurfaced in the 1990s and then again in very late albums such as Tempest.

Get the iTunes Playlist for this chapter.

• Songs and albums:
  1. Bob Dylan: “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Golden Loom,” The Times They Are A-Changin’, “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” “Gates of Eden,” “Roll on John,” “Desolation Row,” The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3.
• Literature:
  1. William Blake: “Introduction” (I), “Nurse’s Song,” The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
  2. Bob Dylan: “11 Outlined Epitaphs,” Chronicles: Volume 1, The Lyrics: 1961-2012, Lyrics: 1962-1985, Writings and Drawings.
  3. Allen Ginsberg: The Gates of Wrath, Deliberate Prose, Collected Poems: 1947-1997, The Complete Songs of Innocence and Experience, The Gates of Wrath: Rhymed Poems, 1948-1972, “A Poem for the Laurels You Win,” The Letters of Allen Ginsberg.

Contact Luke Walker on Twitter.