Coda
摘要
This short coda to my study reads the final two country songs on John Wesley Harding as provocations on how to read the sequence of more elliptical, complex compositions which precede them. In 1967, country music was but one of three modes in which Dylan was experimenting—the other two being the compositions influenced by his rediscovery of folk sources in the Basement Tapes recordings and, of course, the uniquely self-referential explorations of modes of address that encompasses the poetics of John Wesley Harding. Rather than read these two country music songs as mere signposts to where he would be heading (Nashville Skyline) I place them in the company of the other songs on John Wesley Harding and read them as further provocations for the listener to realign their position in relation to the sources and genres brought to the fore by these songs and by the preceding sequence of songs. Essentially, I position them as solicitations to reread the preceding songs from an allegorical position, something that the other songs on the album resist consistently. This solicitation, on a metatextual level, continues Dylan’s construction of an album which asks us to question regnant reading strategies that have been brought to his work.