ABSTRACT
Bob Dylan’s songs, interviews and a television advertisement are used to examine the presence of nostalgia and the role it often plays in his work. While doing so, the article also demonstrates Dylan’s wariness towards nostalgia and focuses on Dylan’s vehement criticism of the media’s own nostalgic treatment of “the Sixties” and of himself. Nostalgia, on the one hand, is presented as being largely unavoidable for Dylan, but, on the other hand, nostalgia in Dylan’s work is related to the idea of returning home, of dealing with loss and with longing for the past. These traits are acknowledged as motifs that are frequently found in Dylan’s work. Drawing on the theories of nostalgia developed by Svetlana Boym in The Future of Nostalgia (2001), this article examines Dylan’s experience of nostalgia, his use of it in the framework of his song writing, his views on nostalgia and the use of Dylan to promote nostalgia.
