From reputation to canonization. The case of Bob Dylan’s Nobel

Abstract

The article examines the canonization process of Bob Dylan, the 2016 laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature, as a poet, and thus the process of transition of the art of song into the sphere of literary work. The analysis is based on Ivan Rozanov’s work “Literary Reputations”, which appeared almost 100 years ago. A novelty of the article is that earlier the object (Bob Dylan’s receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature) and the subject (the reputation and canonization in the form in which I.N. Rozanov understood them) were not considered relative to each other in philology. As a result, it is concluded that, if the canonization of Dylan as a poet is not realized, then it is very close to the realization. The inclusion of song in the realm of literature has not yet taken place, but the decision of the Nobel committee confirms that something has happened to literature as we usually think of it: it is acquiring previously unconventional formats, seeking and finding for itself new methods of its realization. The decision to award the prize to Dylan was not a whim on the part of the Nobel Committee, but a simple recognition of a fact in the current literary process.