Bob Dylan turned American folk traditions into modern prophecy
Bob Dylan’s ‘A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall’ is the first truly modernist folk song: it reworks tradition into a prophetic warning
by Timothy Hampton
Timothy Hampton is professor of comparative literature and French at the University of California at Berkeley, where he holds the Aldo Scaglione and Marie M Burns Distinguished Professorship. His books include Fictions of Embassy: Literature and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe (2011), Bob Dylan: How the Songs Work (2019) and Cheerfulness: A Literary and Cultural History (2022).
Written by Timothy Hampton