Love minus zero: existenitialism and religious faith in Bob Dylan's lyrics

Bob Dylan's work clearly displays existential influences, throughout Lyrics 1962-1985, which forms the primary source material from which this thesis is derived. Biographical evidence reveals an interest in such writers as Nietzsche and Martin Buber, while the actual text of Dylan's work may be interpreted as often making existential statements. This is not to deny Dylan's religious impulse, which is equally apparent. One can interpret Dylan's religious impulse through the work of Paul Tillich and Rudolf Bultmann, existential theologians, and through the work of Catholic existential philosopher Gabriel Marcel. There is a tension in Dylan's lyrics between religious feeling and existential thought. Dylan's appears driven to explore religious and existential uncertainty. I have tried to interpret Dylan's lyrics principally through comparison with such existential philosophers as Camus, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, and through Biblical references. While I have not forgotten that Dylan's is a "street existentialism" (Shelton, 269), I have sought to give his work the serious analytical treatment which it demands. I would posit that Dylan's work, in Lyrics 1962-1985 falls into six distinct periods, which give evidence of a dialectic or tension between religious feeling and existential belief, expressed initially in a formulation of Dylan's concerns, covered in Chapter One of this thesis, and then following a patter of thesis, antithesis and synthesis which at one pole is expressed in the negativity of the period covered in Chapter Two of this work, and at the other is expressed in the religious fervour of the period covered in Chapter Five. The middle periods, covered in Chapter Three and Four of this work, demonstrate Dylan's preoccupation with synthesising religious and philosophical sensibilities, as does the work of Chapter Six. I know of no other academic or popular work which explores this area so thoroughly.