BOB DYLAN OUTSIDE THE LAW
- THE POETICS OF JOHN WESLEY HARDING

   "This book argues that the songs on Bob Dylan’s John Wesley Harding are deeply concerned with the fractures in collective memory and politics contemporary with its composition and recording. The songs are thorough investigations of the ethics of memory in America.
   Critics and curators frame this song series as a “return to” Dylan’s folk roots and as a “retreat from” the political. Specifically, critics argue that Dylan, on this album, retreats from the explicitly political into the realm of timeless, universal moral concerns (as if these discourses can be so separated). The present book seeks to remedy these oversights and illuminate the reception of Dylan’s songwriting art."

By Robert Reginio, Palgrave Macmillan, October 4, 2025, 320 pages. ISBN 9783032027412.

Thank you to Knut Högvall for this item [0825]