STOCKHOLM, Sweden (CelebrityAccess) — Iconic American singer-songwriter and folk music pioneer Bob Dylan has been awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature.
In announcing their selection of Dylan to receive the prize, the Nobel committee said they awarded the prize to Dylan “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”.
Sara Danius, a literary scholar and the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, which awards the prize, said that Dylan was “a great poet in the English-speaking tradition” and likened him to other poets in the realm of oral poetry such as Homer and Sappho, the New York Times said.
While Dylan had been nominated for the prestigious award, he was considered to be an outside shot as his work falls outside of the usual literary canons that tend to garner Nobels. Dylan is the first American to win the prize since the novelist Toni Morrison, who won the award in 1993.
Dylan first emerged in the New York folk music scene of the early 1960s, but soon shook up the staid, traditionalist folk world with his literally 'electrifying' and controversial performance at the Newport Folk Fest in 1963.
“Mr. Dylan’s work remains utterly lacking in conventionality, moral sleight of hand, pop pabulum or sops to his audience,” Bill Wyman, a journalist, wrote in a 2013 Op-Ed essay in The New York Times arguing for Mr. Dylan to get the award. “His lyricism is exquisite; his concerns and subjects are demonstrably timeless; and few poets of any era have seen their work bear more influence.” – Staff Writers
